


Edison Lighthouse

by scarletcarsonK



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:38:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletcarsonK/pseuds/scarletcarsonK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set before the beginning of Supernatural, Season 10, "Edison Lighthouse" is the story of Rosemary Kline, a young hunter who has a history with all members of Team Free Will--especially Dean Winchester. When she calls the boys for help, Dean is forced to help the girl that ran out on him before she can get away again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over the span of a few months. I'd love to hear any comments or criticism. Seriously, it would make my day.

I.  
Cas was standing outside of the hotel room while all hell was breaking loose inside. Arms at his sides, he stared at the hotel like it was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship and he was already dead in the water. Heavy glass showered through the windowpane, landing near Castiel, but not on his shoes, which were still so clean. Through heaven, hell, purgatory, shit—Cas would go everywhere and back before he’d start dressing shabbily. Dean had known him through enough to notice that it was very unlike Cas to just give up.  
When they came into the spot, Dean didn’t even turn the impala off. Instead, he and Sam both touched onto the gravel before the car had fully stopped. The car whined, but both of them had pulled out guns, undeterred.  
“What’s happening?” Dean yelled. From inside the motel room, wind was blowing and glass sprayed out of the window again.  
Cas turned around; his eyes were empty. “It’s warded…against angels. She’s warded me out; I can’t go in,”  
Images were rushing into Dean’s mind of Rose sick, Rose strung up by a rope, Rose burning on a ceiling, or maybe demons, shifters, vamps, anything. Someone inside the room screamed, and Sam took off running. Dean followed close behind him. They crossed over the threshold and the door slammed. Dean had halfway turned to try and kick it open, but Sam paused and the wind stopped. Dean stopped to stare at her.  
Rose was crouched in the middle of the room, one of her shoulders scrunched up with the rest of her body hanging limp. Her feet barely touched the floor, and what was left bled copiously. A slow whistling noise came from behind a matt of dark hair.  
Dean’s first thought was that Rose had gotten too skinny. Then, the room seemed to open up before them. Wind blew in from the window to illuminate the mass of anti-possession warnings and angel wardings all over the room, mixed with newspaper clippings and drawings that hung from the ceilings. There were words written in languages that were definitely not human, and scribbles of crosses and fire all around her. There were bodies smoking with black smoke swirling out of their nostrils slowly all over the ground around her. An angel blade was strewn at her feet.  
She laughed. “Well, isn’t this a surprise,” Her head rolled back and two black eyes looked out at them. “She said that you weren’t coming,”  
Sam replied with a hollow laugh, “I guess you just don’t know us, then. Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus--”  
The demon began to scream, but not in a frightened way. Rose’s body crumpled under the strain of the exorcism, but righted itself, a tiny knife in its hand. “Keep going and I’ll bleed her dry.”  
Dean grabbed Sam’s elbow. It was instinctive: no one was going to hurt Rosemary, especially a demon in her body. Sam jerked his arm off.  
“Well, that’s just a little bit awkward. Go away; Rosie and I have work to do.”  
Dean edged his hand lower on the angel blade and was very careful so that the demon could see it. “Get out of her body, now. Or I’ll stab you to death.”  
The demon smiled. Skin stretched taut over Rose’s bloody teeth. “From what Crowley’s said, I expected more of you. Is this what you call bargaining?”  
Sam glared over at Dean. “Sorry to disappoint you. It won’t happen again,” Sam made a little sarcastic bob of his head and then took a deep breath. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do to her.” Ruby’s demon-killing knife was poised in his hand to strike.  
Dean’s stomach dropped. He knew that Sam had been pissed at the way things had ended with Rose, but animosity that bordered on indifference was almost soulless of him.  
The demon smiled and, with one fluid motion, it dug the knife into Rose’s arm and pulled the knife in deeper, going down her arm to the crook on her elbow. Sam flinched. “Ha! So where’s my rat’s ass, Winchester?”  
Sam started exorcizing again. “This tickles, honey.” The demon began to cut little bits of flesh off of Rose’s feet. “La, la, la, la…” Her eyes had turned black. Dean had edged closer to the demon. If he could find a way to kill it without it killing Rose, he would.  
Sam spoke faster, and the demon coughed, but now moved the knife up to Rose’s throat. “She dies if he keeps going, boy.” Then, the demon laughed. Blood was squirting out of Rosemary’s arm as if she was in a Quinten Tarantino movie, and the demon was squealing with mirth. “I can do this all fucking day long,” The demon giggled and it was Rose’s mouth that smiled, and it was her giggle that came out when the demon starting flicking the knife at Rose’s throat.  
“Sam!”  
The exorcism stopped. The demon straightened up and planted Rose’s feet into the ground. The thick black smoked soared and twisted back into her mouth. She cracked Rose’s neck, lolling her head from side to side, much farther than a human being normally would have moved. “Well, that’s a little bit better.” The blood flowing out of Rose’s arm was still heavy and dark red. “So, this is pretty straightforward,”  
“And how’s that?” Sam had Ruby’s demon-killing knife poised at the perfect angle to launch it into Rose’s neck.  
“Well,” the demon smiled another big Rosemary smile at them. “She’s bleeding out. Nasty, wicked cut on her arm.” The demon dug her finger into Rose’s arm, and pulled out a bloody finger. “These half-angel bastards…they’re really fun to be in, if you know what I mean, eh?” She wiped the finger on her tongue and swallowed. “A positive, with a little smidge of Grace that’s burning out of her faster than this blood!” She flicked her eyes between Sam and Dean, eyeing their reaction. “So, one of you is Dean, right?”  
He cleared his throat, glancing at Sam, “Yeah, why?”  
The demon hopped up and down. “She’s screaming in here, and not from pain, which is what I’d expect. This bitch is one tense freak of nature.” The demon flicked the knife in the deep cut. “And she’s like ‘No, get out, get out, Dean. I can handle this’ and all that blah blah blah. Whichever one of you is Sam, so, you, right, ‘Colossus’? She’s screaming about you too.” She winked at Dean, “Sorry, boy. Rosie don’t need your help right---”  
She bent over quickly, and her hair hung down. “Just get out of here, Dean!” A garbled scream of Enochian obscenities came pouring out of her mouth. “I can do this, Dean, please---”  
Sam started the exorcism again, and the black smoke began to pour out of Rosemary’s mouth, but sluggishly. Rose’s lips were moving quickly under her breath. Blood was dripping down from her temple, from her arms, and from her feet, soaking the carpet black.  
Sam was halfway through the exorcism, but the smoke was curling in on itself, back into Rose’s mouth. “Incursio omnis potestas satanica omnis,” Rose was thrown down on all fours, and the smoke was stuck in the arm below her mouth but above the bloody ground. Her face was turning blue.  
“Rose, stop it!” Dean wanted to pull the damn thing out of her body, or to hold it in so that Sam could cast it out. Her body was vibrating and her eyes were streaming swirls of black smoke; it looked like her body was going to combust.  
“What’s she doing?” Cas yelled from outside. Dean had never heard Cas sound so frightened.  
Rose’s head swung up at them again. Her eyes were black. “Let the lady talk, boy. We’ve got business to deal with.”  
Dean stepped forward into the Devil’s trap. The demon smiled at him, and pulled Rosemary’s body into a standing position. “Why, hello there, stranger.”  
“Sam, don’t stop the exorcism!” He put a hand on Rose’s arm, “Rose, you have to let us help,” The black smoke came out of her mouth faster now; her black eyes were focused on Dean.  
“Damn…it… Dean,” The smoke was coming out at its normal pace. Rosemary’s body shuddered, as she allowed Sam to cast the demon out of her body and down back to hell. The floor below their feet looked charred for a moment, and then muted back to ruby red with Rosemary’s blood.  
She collapsed into the blood. The carpet squished beneath her weight, since the blood was so thick. “Rose!” He caught her by the shoulders and looked up at Sam. “Help me get her to the car.”  
Sam grabbed her legs and ran backwards through the tangled mass of smoking bodies. Dean tried not to breathe in the wretched stench, but he was panting so hard for breath, he could taste Rose’s blood on his tongue.  
Outside, the sky was growing dark. Cas was standing as close to the door as was possible for him. Rose was bleeding copiously out onto the pavement. The skin on her face was paling, and her lips, where untouched with blood, had turned blue. Rose was mumbling under her breath, something that sounded like a protest, but her eyes rolled in her head, and he wouldn’t pay attention.  
“We need to take her to the hospital.”  
Cas was pale, “No, she’ll look too suspicious.” He analyzed the cut on her arm while moving to the impala. He put one hand under her back, and hooked the other arm around her knees. “I’ll stop the bleeding. Just drive to the bunker.”  
Dean started to splutter. “Cas, she needs a hospital.”  
Cas stood up at full height. “Look at all the demons,” He said, gesturing to the bodies surrounding the motel room. “She needs to go someplace safe.”  
“What---and we should just let her die on our way home?”  
Sam hung his head out from outside the car, “Guys,” His face was pale too. “We need to go. Get in the car.”  
Cas had pulled Rose up to his chest. Her bloody face was turned into his jacket. Her blood was everywhere. Cas sat in the back seat, and held Rose’s hand. She was so very frail. When Dean had picked her up, a noticeable part of her felt missing, almost like she had lobbed off an arm or something. He ran around the backside of the car, narrowly avoiding a demon that had lost more blood that Rose had, and yet was somehow still twitching, despite missing its head.  
“Christ,” He got into the car on the passenger’s side. Sam could drive them back to the bunker in one piece. Well, he looked dubiously at Rose and felt his stomach turn; maybe he could get almost all of them back.  
Cas’ brow was furrowed in concentration, and his hands were gingerly over the gash on Rose’s arm, but she was still bleeding. Rose’s eyes were open, but she looked unresponsive.  
“Why isn’t it working?”  
Cas’ squint narrowed. “I don’t know.” The panic was gone from his voice, but he was still pale with fear. “Do you have any rags?”  
“Rags?” Hopefully, Rose couldn’t hear them panic. Dean turned around and reached into the glove compartment. His fingers passed over a dozen old flip-phones and pagers; he knew that there wouldn’t be any rags, but he kept looking.  
Sam was already shrugging off his flannel before Dean could ask for it. He threw it back at Cas, who caught it and immediately began to wind it around her arm. Rose was stirring even less now than before.  
Cas tied ripped the shirt in half, and put one around the cut, and the other above it. Her blood soaked through it almost immediately. Rose’s eyelashes fluttered a little bit. Dean saw her gaze flick downward at her arm. She looked away from it, her face pasty.  
“Leave it.” Her gaze went through him, above the roof of the impala, and probably off into the sky above their heads. There was no peace at all in her eyes, just fatigue. Cas tightened the bandage and she passed out again.  
Cas looked at Dean. “Hold this. I’m going to go back to the motel.” He passed her arm between them. It was an odd, commonplace motion that reflected the shitty situation.  
“What about the healing stuff? She’ll die if you leave!”  
He sounded angry, so Cas replied, in turn, “She left a mess back there. When the cops come, this is going to get out. I’ll call Hannah, and we can clean it up.” Dean climbed back into the backseat.  
“Cas,” Sam looked up from the front seat. They had finally gotten onto a highway, and Sam had maneuvered them away from the other cars to rocket ahead. “Why won’t the healing work?”  
Cas sat up very straight in the seat. “We can’t take her to the hospital.”  
“And why not?” Dean shot back. “We can tell them anything. Maybe, maybe she can be nuts and we---” It sounded ridiculous in his mind. There was no way in hell that they would let them have her after that.  
Cas didn’t dignify him with a response. He held Rose’s arm up again and stared at the cut through the fabric. His eyes looked like X-rays, and it made Dean’s stomach turn. “Something is wrong with her--” Cas put down her arm and pulled her body up into his lap.  
The weird sweater that Rose was wearing had blood soaked through it in odd splotches. Dean hadn’t bothered to look at it before; there was blood everywhere, but it was still wet by her midriff. Cas pulled up her shirt, and Dean felt nauseous. All over her stomach were tattoos in scripts that he was sure even Cas probably couldn’t read. He recognized some as angel wards, and a demonic anti-possession charm that a box cutter had slashed through.  
“What the hell?” Dean had almost taken off his shirt to find something to stop the bleeding, but Cas covered up her skin with his hand before Dean could start. Dean looked up at Cas and their eyes met for a moment, while Cas’ bloody hand was over Rose’s skin. He moved his hand over the tattoo, and it disappeared.  
Cas wasted no breath, “She did this on purpose.” Dean still felt nauseous. He put his wrist over his mouth. This was his Rose, his Rosemary Kline, and she was sweet kid and---  
“What’s happening?” Sam had slowed down behind an SUV. They were driving onto the turnpike. When Sam had the car stopped to grab a ticket from the machine, Dean could feel him shaking in the driver’s seat.  
Cas pulled down Rose’s shirt down. It didn’t look like anyone was looking, but the blood was everywhere and no one would wait for any excuses if a camera showed that they had a passed out, bloody girl in the backseat.  
“Rose cut her anti possession tattoo to let a demon in?” The statement turned into a question on his lips. He looked at Cas, his thoughts full of how Cas must have been wrong, and that Rose wouldn’t get a tattoo any more than she would purposefully claw one off to invite a demon into her body.  
“What?” Sam’s voice was muffled. “What the hell happened to her?” They merged back in with the rest of traffic, and everyone in the impala was silent. Rose breathed small, quick breaths that weren’t deep. Cas laid her head down in his lap, but she was still breathing weirdly.  
Cas broke the silence. “I’m going to go clean up the room. Call if she does anything…” He glanced at her bloody arm again, told Dean to keep the pressure and then vanished.  
By now, Dean was all too accustomed to Cas coming and going whenever the spirit moved him. Seeing Rose was far more disturbing. Two years of absence had made her skinny and pale. Her hair was darker than Dean had remembered. It was longer too, she probably had dyed it. Had it really been almost two years since she had disappeared from their lives, from his life?  
Dean held Rose’s arm as tightly as he could. Her fingers were curled inward; all the cuticles had been bitten off. When the bleeding stopped, he allowed his hand to trace over hers. Rose seemed even small underneath his touch. Her legs were bent up weirdly over his lap. Neither of them noticed their discomfort. He was afraid to move her too much. There was blood all over the inside of the impala. When they got back to the bunker, he would have to clean it. Maybe they could enlist Rose’s help. She was always--“Cleaning,” The words came out of his mouth before he could catch them.  
Sam craned his neck backward. “What was that?”  
Dean swallowed. “I was just thinking about how Rose liked to clean,” His voice turned into a little laugh. He could picture her standing before the two of them in the kitchen, a spray bottle and rag in hand. She had worn a nun’s get-up, because it was all that they could find in the bunker’s wardrobe. Sweat had clung to her brow, and she had scrubbed the tiny imperfections away with a vengeance. ‘What?’ she had demanded when Dean had laughed ‘I’m going to earn my keep. You, Colossus,’ She had beckoned Sam forward with the curve of her finger, ‘Aid me in this quest to clean your kitchen!’  
“She did like to clean,” Sam conceded. “Has the bleeding stopped?” Dean checked the bandage: there was no blood left in her body to bleed.  
“I think so.” He put Rose’s arm back on her stomach. She was barely breathing. “Something’s wrong with her breathing.” Her chest was hardly rising and falling. Each breath whooshed out of her nose as if it was her last. “Cas!”  
Rose’s eyes opened a little bit. She squinted at Dean, but her eyes were growing fixed. “Cas!” Dean yelled like he was the one dying.  
Then she stopped.  
“No,” Dean shook her shoulder, but her head merely lolled to the side. Her eyes were open now, and fixed above her head. All the wind left his body. He could hear himself say her name, but he didn’t feel his mouth move. The world around him was ringing until he realized that he had stopped breathing the moment that she had too. “Cas...” his voice sounded dead now. Sam was driving faster now. Thunder was lowing above their heads. “Cas.” He repeated.  
But he was too late; Cas came back too late. He appeared in the car in front of her head to cradle it in his hands. Cas was pale like a human. “No.” Cas grabbed her wrist and looked at the cut. Dean had been wrong, for it still bled. “No!” Cas forced her eyes closed. Cas opened his mouth, and pearly blue light began to glow all around them.  
“Cas!” Dean reached out to grab his friend’s arm, but Cas threw it away. The Grace’s light coming out of the angel’s mouth swirled and poured back into Rose’s mouth.  
Immediately, her body jerked as if she had been shocked. Her back arched and a scream of terrified pain emitted into the car. The blue light was surrounding them all of them now. Castiel was giving her back so much. Dean could only wonder--how much was enough?  
As quickly as it had started, the light was gone. Some of it receded back into Cas’ mouth. So he hadn’t given her everything. Dean felt relief blossom into his stomach that deepened when Rose’s head moved and her eyes blinked. “Cas,” she said.  
“Yes,” His voice hoarse too. He moved into the leg space so that their heads would be closer to the same level. Cas looked drained: the dark shadows below his eyes had deepened. Dean could see already that Cas had given her too much.  
“I’m so cold,” Her teeth were chattering. “What—what’s happening?”  
“Here,” Cas had taken off the trench coat and began to shove it on over her shoulders. He moved back into the seat to pick up her head. His face had softened considerably. If Dean hadn’t known Cas, he could have guessed that this was some normal guy fawning over his normal, half-dead, bloody half-angel.  
“Cas,” Rose squeaked. Her hand tightened around the fabric on her sweater. Dean squeezed her feet in anxiety. “Cas, what’s happening? What did you do? Cas!” Her body bent at the center, only to flop back down on the seat. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she was peacefully still. Cas held her throughout the entire ordeal. His hand rested on the seat next to her shoulder when she was finished.  
Cas and Dean’s eyes met. “Hannah’s cleaning up the motel. I’m going to help. She should be okay now.” He turned to Sam, “You’re going too fast.”  
Sam snorted. His voice was slightly breathless, “Yeah, I know, Cas. I got a little carried away what with Rose dying and everything…” His voice trailed away.  
“A policeman is now following you. You should slow down.” His eyes were earnest. Cas glanced back over at Dean before he left. “You don’t have to sit with her. She’ll be fine.” His voice had gone back to its usual dryness. After he disappeared, it hung heavily in the impala.  
Sam slowed down the car. As their damnable luck would have it, the cop switched over to blow right past them. Dean whistled as the car zoomed out of sight. “Well.” He moved over into the seat and repositioned Rose’s legs to be more comfortable over his own.  
“Should we really take her back with us?”  
“Are you serious, Sam? She literally just died. I don’t think we can just send her off right away.” Dean caught Sammy’s eyes in the rearview mirror.  
“Dying can’t just excuse her from what she’s done. You were in that room with me, Dean. Who knows what kind of deep shit she was in? I mean—Crowley, demons, whatever that bitch was.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. If we go back with her, it can’t just be like the good old days where it was the four of us against the world. She left. That’s it. Okay?”  
Dean had looked away. She looked eerily peaceful, like Carrie from Carrie taking a cat nap in the dying evening light. Her presence seemed to settle in his chest. He vaguely wondered if the feeling of missing her had ever left him. “Okay,” He replied. Her hand was only a foot away from him, so he allowed himself to take it again. The sun was setting quickly. Sam’s eyes were on Dean, but he didn’t look at his brother. “Okay.”


	2. II

II.  
She came to him when he most wanted to die. The days had been slurring together at that point. The routine was never-varying: he would wake up, drink, get human blood, drink, do research with Sam, and then pass out at the table. He’d wake up to a cup of stone cold coffee that Sam would leave without a note. One day, there had been a folded piece of paper shoved underneath the cup. He had unfolded, and then opened it too quickly, only to find the number for their new pizza place. He’d remember the voluptuous blonde behind the counter with a smile and his usual dosage of regret.   
What he regretted least were the fights. There had been so many fights he had gotten into while he had been a full-blooded demon. Dean had remembered feeling high. He was high off of the Mark of Cain and the insane, orgasmic power that he had felt. Everything had felt good: the liquor had been richer, the women hotter, and the fights were bloodier. If he had been purified in purgatory, as a demon the life had been blown back into him. Not giving a damn had been given to him too. All of his fears about Sammy and Cas had disappeared. The Mark had taken that away from him. Well, he and Sam had decided to get rid of it. Both of them were in on it. He had to keep reminding himself of that fact. Dean had wanted it gone. God help him, it was killing him now, but he had wanted it gone.   
It was Cas, really, who had convinced him. Cas had been bloody and wasted away from the lack of Grace and the influx of alcohol. He had nothing left in the world to lose, or so he had said. And, he hadn’t begged with Dean, or even tried to reason with him. Those tired, blue eyes looked at him once and asked him to do the impossible. Sammy had already worn him down, so what could he do but say yes? Cas and Sam were the only family that he had left. And after what had happened to Kevin, losing family was not something that he could allow anymore.   
The booze today was old. He must have left it open overnight. The ice that he had sloshed in it had watered it down too. Dean downed it all regardless. The next few minutes were slightly hazy. Dean had the impression that Sam had come into the room, seen him slumped over, and then walked out. Sam, of course, denied it all, but Sam had been full of shit a lot lately, so it wasn’t completely out of the window.   
What Dean had remembered was squinting through the empty glass at the fun house reflections on the other side. The human blood was gradually bringing him back to his old, soulful self. His eyes refused to look over to the corner where Gadreel had ganked Kevin. So, he stared into the empty space in the front of the bunker, past the weird light-up table thing that had been really hot shit back for the Men of Letters in the fifties. Before she appeared, there was visible silence in the off-white gap. Dean had his eyes halfway closed when a dark mass appeared behind the glass. His mouth had flicked upward in a lazy smile. “Cas?”  
The figure paused a beat. “No.” It was a female voice. “Are you Dean?”   
Dean remembered standing as quickly as he could. The girl had plenty of time to react, but she stayed still. She didn’t bother putting up her hands when he told her too. Instead, she looked at him in a hard, calculating way. “My name is Rosemary, and I would like to talk with you and your brother.” She paused for a heat beat again. “Please,”  
He had loaded the gun and smiled at her. “Sister, you had better get out of here now before I start shooting.”  
For as long as he lived, he would never forget the way that her pupils didn’t dilate, nor did she soften the blazing look that she gave him. “Go ahead.” She pulled her open jacket open to reveal a tight shirt underneath. She didn’t glance down at her unprotected midsection. He had eyed a glittering angel blade and a pistol swung on either hip.   
“Sam,” He slurred into the bunker. He could hear Sam bumbling around in the kitchen. “We have a guest.” The commotion in the kitchen stopped.   
“Yeah?” This was Sam’s careful voice. “Who’s that?”  
Dean didn’t move his eyes off of the girl’s weapons. Her face was blank.   
“It’s a new face.” He took a step closer to the girl.   
For the first time, she glanced down at her torso. “You can shoot me if it would make you feel better.” She looked behind him and inclined her head toward the kitchen. “The same offer goes for your brother.” She put her weight on her one leg and squinted at him. It had been terribly familiar, and it twisted his stomach in ice. He was starting to get really pissed off that new angels were still crawling out of the woodwork.   
“Haven’t we earned a break, Sam, from this weird, angel shit?” He yelled back unnecessarily; Sam had come into the room, his gun aloft.   
Sam took an up and down look at the girl. She shifted her weight to her other leg so that both Winchesters caught the flash of the weapons on her hips. It was the angel blade that Sam focused on first.  
“Are you with Cas?”  
She shook her head. “No. I’m,” she wetted her lips, but didn’t look threatening. “I’m an independent party.”  
Sam’s gun was still in the air. “What are you doing in our bunker, then?” Dean’s fingers were itching to pull the trigger.   
She turned her head to face Dean; the rest of her body was still. “Like I said to you a minute before, shoot me if it will make you feel better.” Her eyes were dark and hard. “I won’t begrudge you a bullet. It’s been rather rude of me to barge in like this.” If she wasn’t so pale, Dean would have assumed that she was confident.  
“You sure?” He took a step forwards, his eyebrows were arched.   
“Yes.” She raised hers in turn.  
Sam walked between them. “Dean,” He looked down at the gun, which Dean lowered. His hands had been shaking, and Dean damned all the alcohol that he had drunk, then he lowered his gun.  
She opened her mouth to speak, when Dean put up a hand. “What do you want? Cas isn’t here. Go to heaven if you need him, or just go to hell.” He smiled at the irony of telling an angel to go to hell.   
She crossed her arms. “Thank you for the advice. Right now, I want to talk to you two.” Her voice was smooth. “I have an offer for you. I’ll ask once and if you don’t like it, I’ll leave.” She looked between the two of them. Neither of them spoke, which threw her off a little. “Um…okay, my name is Rosemary and I need to speak with Castiel--”  
Dean immediately pulled out his gun again. “Nope. Get out.”   
“But--” She began to protest, which annoyed him more.   
“You can take this bullshit and shove it up your ass, kid. I don’t care.” He pointed at the door. “Get out.”   
She stood taller. “I can help him.” Dean turned around and cocked the gun back. He still didn’t hear her move. “I’m aware of his condition.” Her voice was delicate, but firm. “And I can help him.”  
Dean saw Sam cross his arms. “What do you mean?”  
“He needs Grace and I am familiar with someone who can give that to him.” She paused when neither of them spoke. Dean could feel her eyes on the two of them when he exchanged a mute look with Sam. “What I need is an audience with Castiel. And,” now her voice was slow, “for that, I need the two of you. You’re Castiel’s closest friends; if he would come when anyone called, it would be you.” Her eyes rested on Dean, and he felt his cheeks flush. Cas hadn’t been answering anyone’s call lately.  
“And why can’t you call him yourself?”   
The girl’s face paled again. “He isn’t responding to my prayers. Time’s running out for him.” Her voice was concrete. “The sooner we can agree on terms, the sooner Castiel can get Grace.” She glanced over at Sam. “I don’t have anything in writing; I’m sorry.”  
“So?” Sam said.  
The girl shrugged. “You’re the lawyer. Isn’t written contracts what lawyers do?” She didn’t wait for Sam to respond. Her tired face lit up, “Oh, I almost forgot.” Her hands were up in the air. “I’m going to reach into my jacket to get some references.”  
Dean scoffed. “References? What are you smoking?”  
The girl pulled out a few folded pieces of paper that she unfolded and glanced over. “These are a few that prove I am a worthy business partner.” She handed two of the papers to Sam.   
Sam glanced at them while wearing his extremely studious research face, which hid the lack of damns that he probably gave about this chick’s references. His face grew paler as he read down the list. “How did you find her?” He shoved the papers into Dean’s hands. Sunny, flowery script swam before his eyes. His pulse felt dead.  
“You know Charlie?” His mouth was dry. “Well,” Dean tried to smile. “At least she says you’re not ‘completely batshit crazy’. “ Charlie’s crazy script made him smile. She had nearly written him a novel, all about how ‘Rose did this’, and ‘Rose knows this and that’. “You killed a vampire with a chainsaw?”  
Sam’s bitchface was back. “Dude, really?”  
Dean shrugged. “So,” He looked down at the paper in mock concentration. “Rose, you seem to know our friends,” He shuffled the next paper so it would overlap the first. “Charlie and Garth,” The weight of dread layered on his stomach. “which is really, really creepy.”  
Garth’s note was much shorter than Charlie’s. Dean cleared his throat and read, “‘Rosemary is no snake-charmer, but she will never leave your corner. Call me when she gets to you, Love, Garth Fitzgerald the fourth.’” Dean glanced up at Rosemary. “How does an angel get to be so familiar with two hunters?”  
“I’m--” Her face was pained. “I’m not an angel. Do you believe your friends? I know Garth’s short but he wrote this other one that was completely ridiculous,” The frayed skin around her mouth smiled, almost in spite of her efforts to be professional. “And I had to have him rewrite it, like, seven times or something crazy like that.” She raked a hand through her hair. At her hairline, red bits of skin peeled in circles. It was definitely familiar, and the memory tugged at the dread in his stomach.  
“If you’re not an angel…” His voice trailed off. Rosemary’s face was giving him major déjà vu. “Lucifer. Your face…”  
Rosemary got even paler. “Excuse me?”  
Sam’s face was pale too. “Your skin,” he pointed at her hairline, to where the skin looked most frail. Sam couldn’t finish the sentence, and pulled out his gun again.  
“I’m not Lucifer.” She looked annoyed. “I have eczema.” Rosemary took a breath. “What do you think of my offer? Call Castiel and I can get him Grace.”  
“He’ll never do it.” Dean’s gun was out too. “He’s not going to take the Grace away from--- whatever the hell you are.”  
Rosemary crossed her arms again. The thick, gaudy sweater she was wearing folded over in odd lumps that showcased just how small she was.   
The answer came to his lips. “You’re dying.” He glanced over at Sam. “Sorry to be the one to break this to you, kid, but your vessel…” His gun made a circle in the air for emphasis. The words were failing him now. She was very frail. If he looked at her too hard, the icy feeling in his stomach came back. “This is still really sketchy.”  
She was almost too quick in her response. “I’ll do anything: I’ll answer more questions.”  
“Who are you, really?” Sam said. “Or, what are you?”   
The girl shifted her weight back to her right leg. “I’m Rosemary. That’s it.” Her voice bordered on indifference. “What I am doesn’t matter for our part of the deal.”  
Dean snorted, “Oh ho ho, so it doesn’t matter? Fine, then, sweetheart, I have another question for you: what gives?”  
Rosemary sounded defensive, “Excuse me?”  
“What do you get out of hooking Cas up with some Grace?” He couldn’t wipe the smile off of his face. “You get some sort of unnatural high off of doing random stuff, with nothing in return?”  
She set her jaw. “Excuse me, Dean Winchester, but that is none of your business.” Her hands were balled into fists; all pretense of propriety was gone. She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Okay, can I level with you for a minute?”  
Dean tried to snort again, but Sam said, “Okay,” in a voice that was far too soft for the situation. Dean gaped at him. Could they focus on the fact that she had magically showed up in their bunker?  
Sam and Rosemary were quiet. Evidently, he had said all of this aloud. Mentioning how hot his face got was a gross understatement.  
Rosemary cleared her throat. “Yeah…so, ‘no’ on the honesty, then?” She rolled her eyes and focused on Sam. “Castiel will be doing me a bigger favor than I can give to him.” Rosemary smiled and her eyes lit up and he was totally screwed.


	3. III

Rose woke up a few times in between the stretches of road to the bunker. Cas would always show up whenever she’d speak. Sometimes Dean would only know that Rose was awake from Cas’ renewed presence in the backseat. He always cradled Rose’s head like it was something extremely fragile and precious. Dean had moved into the front seat after the first hour. Sam still drove like a man possessed, but his speed was slower now that Rose was asleep.  
“Shit.” Rose’s voice crawled to his ears. His reaction, in turn, was more abrupt.  
“Damn it, Dean, she’s just talking in her sleep again.” Sam had stopped looking in the rearview mirror after the first hour. “Do you really have to move that fast?”  
Dean had the strange desire to grab her hand before Cas came back, but the angel beat him to the punch. Rose stirred; her hand was reaching towards her pants leg to grab at her switchblade. Dean had the cuts to prove how their effort to remove it had fared. “I—I have to get out of here.” She rolled over onto her arm and gasped. Sam’s speed was increasing. “Not safe. It’s not safe. I have to—I have to go, Cas.” Her eyes raked the ceiling for a thing that the Winchesters couldn’t see. Dean was half-tempted to glance up at it with her, but he kept his gaze on Cas.  
Cas wordlessly put two fingers to her temple. Rose’s eyes rolled back into her head and she was still. Cas’ fingers moved to her hairline, which was as broken as the day Dean had met her. Sweat and grime had dried into a muted brown gunk that streaked into her hair. Little pieces of shining glass reflected orange each time that they passed beneath the orange highway lights. The orange did not look well with the blood.  
“How far are we to the bunker?” Cas’ fingers rested at her hairline. Dean couldn’t stop staring where the two touched.  
“Half an hour till our exit,” Sam said. His voice was flat and pissed. “Give or take.”  
Dean’s annoyance was back. He still was staring at Cas’ fingers in Rose’s hair, but he forced himself to sever the connection and glare at Sam. “You don’t have to sound like that.”  
Sam was ready. “Like what?” His very voice itched for a fight.   
Dean turned around in his seat. “Never mind.”  
“So, seriously, what do I sound like? Pissed?” He laughed. “Yeah, I guess I’m entitled to feel a little pissed, Dean.”  
Dean forced himself to look out the window. “Let’s just go home.”  
“Right, because it’ll all be fine when we get home.” Sam scoffed and glanced back at Cas and Rose. “Maybe Cas can zap Rose back in time to two years ago---”  
Dean started to interrupt, “—Sam--”  
“—and then she can bake you an apple pie and braid my hair and it’ll all be--”  
“Sam!”  
Sam finished triumphantly, “fucking great, just like it used to be before she took off.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel louder than before.  
“So help me, Sam, I will rip your fingers off.” He had wanted to avoid fighting until they had gotten to the bunker safely. Whatever Rose had been dealing with could have followed them back. “Let’s not do this now.”  
Sam turned to face him. “And when would be a good time? When we get back to the bunker and you and Cas can build an altar around her again? No, I’m serious,” Dean started to interrupt, but Sam had gotten into a stride. “Will you think it’s a good time before or after your third kid? Or will it still be bad timing then?”  
“Christ, can’t you just contain yourself until we get back? She’s not going anywhere this time, not until she’s better. We’ll make sure of that. Just chill out for another half an hour,” Dean was pleading. “Come on, Sam.”  
“She can’t stay with us. I can’t do this again.” He looked over at Dean, his eyes hard. “She cannot stay with us.”  
Cas spoke up, “So, what do you plan on doing with her, then?” He gestured to the rain-spotted windows. “Leaving her out in the rain sounds good. Without our help, she should be good for about an hour. Then, they will take her, torture her, and kill her, in the bloodiest way possible.” Cas was sitting up straight in his chair, pissed as all hell. “I can’t take her to heaven, so, for now, she has to stay in the bunker. If you can’t do that, for Rose of all people, then I might as well do this,” Cas opened the car door and salty rain sprayed in on them. Dean swore, and saw Cas hoist Rose’s dampening body by her shoulders.  
The cars next to them swerved and started blasting their horns at them. Dean turned around in his seat and slammed the door shut. “We get it, Cas!” Dean looked over at Rose’s unconscious frame. The rain had caused the blood at her temple to run down her face and onto Cas’ jacket.  
Cas’ eyes were hard. “Do you?”  
Dean realized that his hand had found Rose’s hand again in the dark. He smoothed the cracked skin on her hand and outlined her nails with his thumb. Her had had gotten warmer from being with Cas. He didn’t want to ever let go. “We’re going to be okay.” He squeezed Rose’s hand, and then forced himself to let go. Dean collected himself back in his seat and turned around. “Right, Sammy?”  
Sam was silent, and the impala roared down to their exit.  
Rose’s blood was now underneath his fingernails. He tried to pick at them with his thumb, but still savor how his hand was warmer after he had held Rose’s hand. Dean could feel Sam’s eyes’ hardness. Sam’s urgency was reflected in his speed and in his silence. Maybe there was still a part of Sam that could try to like Rose again. She had been Sam’s friend first, as she had so often teased the both of them. That girl, his Rose, was only in the backseat. His heart was heavy and light simultaneously with that knowledge. The blood on his hands cracked when he flexed his fingers.  
“Here.” Sam said unnecessarily when they had finally pulled up alongside the bunker’s driveway.   
“We pick up a tail?” Dean glanced around the edges of the car. Cas and Rose were still eerily still. Rose’s breath still fluttered out of her nose, and he forced himself not to watch her chest rise and fall. Crap, how was watching someone sleep not rape-y?   
Sam didn’t turn. “No.” He finally said, and turned the car off. The four of them sat in silence for a split second.  
“Well?” Cas opened the door closest to him. “Let’s get her inside.” Cas moved quickly out of the car, to stand perfectly erect outside without stretching. Before Dean was out of the car, Cas began to pull Rose out.   
“Wait.” Sam had gotten out of the car too, and was moving over to help Cas, who had Rose up in his arms. One of his arms was beneath her knees, the other on her back. Her head had curled into Cas’ shoulder. Her dried blood left an odd imprint on him, reminiscent of a sponge.   
Cas inclined his head to the bunker door. “Let’s hurry.” Dean watched Cas walk after Sam with Rose perfectly situated in his grasp. For a minute, he wondered about Rose’s weight on Cas, now especially since part of his Grace was back inside of her. But his friend bore her with no sign of pain or fatigue. He made it to the door a second after Sam had. When it was time for him and Rose to move through the door, Cas brought her legs in closer to his chest and carried her over the threshold.   
Dean followed them quickly through the door and shut it behind them. He hadn’t seen anything following the car since they had left Rose’s motel room. It was definitely weird, but a quiet night could help them all sleep, Rose especially. Cas quickly carried her down the stairs. There was reverence in the way that he looked at her that he hadn’t seen before.  
Sam took the lead back to the dorms, with Cas and Rose in tow. Dean felt like every balled up piece of paper and overturned coffee mug was somehow hazardous, and he wanted to stop and clean before she woke up. The whole front room looked dirty in comparison to when she had last been there. Of course, back then it was immaculate.  
Sam paused at the end of the kitchen and snorted when he saw the balled up paper in Dean’s hand. “Playing house?”  
Dean flicked him off and threw the paper away. He was still following Cas and Rose back through the hallway. Dean’s bedroom was just off of the kitchen. He half-turned into it before he saw that Cas still walked down the hallway towards that Rose had lived in at the end. He ignored Sam’s smirk at him and followed Cas into the final, empty room.  
Like a complete sap, he had gone into her room often after she had left. The remnants of old bottles of beer and whiskey that he hadn’t cleared out were in the corner. The bed that she had slept in was as neat as the day that she had left. The imprint that Dean’s body had made on it was still there. Cas and Sam mercifully ignored all of this when they laid Rose down on the bed.  
Sam’s mouth was agape for a moment when he stared at Rose, but he caught himself and snapped it shut. “She can’t stay here.” Sam insisted, if only for his own benefit. Dean and Cas ignored him. Dean could feel himself getting pissed at Sam again. He curled his hand into a fist and crossed his arms over his chest.  
Cas righted a chair that had been overturned next to the head of her bed and sat down. The clean outsides of Cas’ shoes barely dented the part of bed he placed them on. He folded his arms and looked up at the Winchesters. “I’ll stay here until she wakes up.” There was no discussion in his eyes. Both he and Rose held the capacity for being unwavering on all of their stupid decisions. It must be an angel thing. Dean forced his mouth to smile at his friend.  
“’Kay,” he eyed some of the bottles by the door. The whole room stank like beer and piss. Cas watched him leave very pointedly. He tried to turn so that he could sneak one more look at Rose before leaving. It was less private with Cas there. Rose’s head was turned away from Cas. Her bloody hair sprayed out, a halo, above her head. Tomorrow he would get her a sponge and she could clean herself up. The promise of another day with her definitely in the bunker twisted his stomach. He grimaced one more time at Cas before closing the door and heading down the hall.  
Sam was leaning against Dean’s doorframe. A bucket and sponge was in his hand. “You’d better wash it all off before it dries,” He handed Dean the bucket and smirked at him. No light was in his eyes. “Or before she leaves again.”  
“Don’t be such a bitch,” He took the bucket from Sam rougher than he had wanted to. “Cas is going to stay with her until she wakes up.”  
Sam rolled his eyes. He looked much bigger without his flannel shirt while being silhouetted by the bunker’s light. Dean could still kick his ass. He stopped in front of Sam and looked up at him. “Just wait until tomorrow, okay? She’ll still be here.” He gestured back at the room.   
Sam’s face was set, but his eyes were bigger. “I wish that I could believe that.” He brushed past Dean’s shoulder so that the water in the bucket sloshed from side to side and landed on his shoes. Dean swore, but didn’t take a swing at Sam, which would have definitely improved his mood.  
On his way out of the bunker, he tried to size up the kitchen and front room. He and Sam had driven off in a hurry that morning, so it was in a decent state of disrepair. He threw a few more bottles in the trash before walking up the stairs and out of the bunker.  
Dawn was many hours away, but Dean still glanced hopefully at the horizon. It was clearing up above him. Wispy clouds were floating away from each other in the purple sky. A few stars were too bright to be dulled by the orange streetlight. Sam had used to wish on stars when they were little. It drove their Dad to be pissed as all hell when Sammy came up with his cheekiest stuff. When he was five, Sam had wished for a milkshake very loudly for at least a dozen nights before John had caved and gotten it for him. Dean could still remember them fighting over the spoon in the car. They had smeared vanilla ice cream all over the backseat, before John had thrown the damn thing out of the window. The smile on Dean’s face slid off. There hadn’t been another milkshake for years since then.  
He squared himself to look at the impala now. Even though it was night, he could see the dark stain of Rose’s blood on the seat. He swore again to himself and opened the door.  
Sam had been right about cleaning it fresh. It was everywhere, in pools of it where her hand had been. There was a lump in his throat as he dipped the sponge in and out of the bucket over and over until the red in the bucket was darker than the blood that he was wiping up. Dean managed to get most of it out. There was a rather rosy hue left on the seats. He grimaced at the pun. It was something that Rose would have said.  
He could hear her in his head: “It’s pretty,” she had said the first time that she had seen it with him. Her eyes had bugged out of her head. Crossing her arms over her chest against the icy cold of winter, she had grinned at him. “It’s just like I had imagined, but,” She tilted her head a little to the side.  
“What?” He hadn’t liked her then, so his voice was rough.  
Rose didn’t even care. “It’s got a fat ass.” She smiled at him, and he remembered feeling nothing but annoyance. His baby, fat?  
Sam had laughed, Dean remembered. Dean had thrown a wad of snow at him. Rose had fallen silent and flattened against the car. Her body had curved down perfectly beside the wheel to avoid most of the wet snow. She watched the two brothers throw the snow at each other. When she was bored, she had crossed her arms again. “You finished yet?”  
Dean remembered flicking the last bits of snow on her face. She licked them off of her lips and smiled at him. Literal ice trickled down his back, and he had grinned at her too, in spite of himself. Goosebumps had blossomed on his stomach. He hadn’t felt this happy in a long time, definitely since the Mark had been transferred to him.  
Dean stopped smiling and got into the car to drive. Rose had smiled weakly at Sam’s final attempt to hurl a snowball at him. “Son of a bitch!” Dean smacked the cold snow off of his hair. Sam had grinned at the two of them, and Dean shutting his mouth made the moment richer.  
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he walked into the bunker. Something definitely had its eyes on him. Before entering the bunker’s heavy doors, he winked at the shadows behind him. “’Night.” If he had had the Mark on him, maybe he would have felt a greater urge to fight off whatever it was. Now that Crowley knew where the bunker was, it was fair game to assume that most of his demons knew about it too. Their batcave broadcasted hunter vibes all over the Midwest.  
With a heavy click, the door to the bunker closed. The temperature difference was noticeable, but not unpleasant. Sam was sitting at one of the tables and stared at his laptop. His eyes were glazed over with fatigue. He had replaced the bloody undershirt for another button down. A smidge of blood was on the sleeve.  
“What happened?” He set the bucket down to pick up another dated newspaper.   
Sam didn’t look up. “She got out of bed.”  
Dean’s hands started to shake. “What?”  
“She got out of bed.” Sam repeated. “Cas got her to go back to sleep.” Dean put down what he was holding. How could Sam sound so indifferent?  
“Well, was she okay?” Sam’s sentences were clipped, so he felt justified in demonstrating how pissed he felt at him.   
Sam looked up at him; finally, “She was delirious. She wanted to leave and kept asking about Charlie.”  
Confusion dotted his thoughts. “Charlie?” He had half-hoped that it would have been him. “What the hell does she want with Charlie?”  
Sam was looking back at the laptop. His eyes were still listless. “She said ‘I need to talk to Charlie Bradbury’. I doubt she even knew she was in the bunker.” He paused. “Didn’t even recognize me or Cas, so something is fucked up in her upstairs.” He gestured to his head. “Don’t go back there.” Dean scoffed and tried to protest, but Sam looked up sharply at him. “I’m serious. Drink yourself blind or go to bed, but leave her alone.” Sam’s voice turned crafty, “If you really believe that she’ll still be here in the morning, then don’t go in there.” Sam looked done. “Oh, and get some more food tomorrow so she’ll have something to steal when she leaves.”  
“She’s in no shape to leave,” Dean controlled his voice. “What makes you think she can just sneak out tomorrow?”  
“Let’s not rule anything out yet.” Sam shut the laptop. “Why are you defending her?”  
“I’m not defending her.” He was on the defensive. “She’ll still be here in the morning. She can explain--”  
“Then what will you do?” Sam had turned in his seat to face Dean. “When you find out all the demonic shit that she’s been up to is it still going to be like it was? The light shining out of her every orifice and all that?”  
Dean scoffed. “Who says ‘orifice’?”  
“I’m serious, Dean. We can’t have whatever it was that was in her—and that she let inside of herself of her own free will—come back to the bunker. Having her back won’t be healthy, either. You’ve only just gotten over her.”  
There was a weight in his stomach. “Stop making me sound like an idiot. That was two years ago.”  
Sam leaned back into his chair. “Fine. Then you shouldn’t have a problem just going to bed, then.”  
Now he was pissed. “Rose needed our help so we showed up for her. We’re not giving her a kidney. God,” He leaned on the back of a chair. “I am getting so sick of your attitude.”  
“My attitude?” Sam said. “You’re the one who’s acting like she didn’t drop off the face of the earth. No note, no phone call, no sighting for two years. We only get the telephone version of a botched rescue prayer through Cas. And I have the attitude problem? Is there something wrong with your head? Did demon-Rose get some of her crazy on you?”  
Dean’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He held up a finger to Sam. “One minute,” It was from Cas. He slid open the message: Shut up she’s sleeping. –C “Well,” he whistled after reading it. “That’s just rude.” He smiled sarcastically at Sam. “Well, Sammy, I’m going to follow your advice and go to bed.” Sam’s words reverberated in his head. Something in his stomach had felt weird.   
Sam had opened his laptop again. “Yeah, whatever.”  
At the edge of the room, Dean paused. He wanted to tell Sam that it would be okay. Rose would still be there in the morning, and they would somehow fix whatever mess that she had to deal with, even if she had been the one who started it. Her words were back in his head, so he ignored the urge and went into the kitchen.  
***

“Hey.” He had sat down next to her on the curb space adjacent to the impala. She was playing with the frayed knee on her jeans. There had been blood under her fingernails mixed in with the ecto-goop that had sprayed when they caught the orderly.  
She nodded at him and looked back down at her knee. “Don’t say it.”  
It had been a few months since she had started hunting with them full-time, far along enough that he kind of liked the kid. The pavement below his ass was wet, but Dean situated himself to better look at her face. “Say what?”  
Ectoplasm came out onto the curb where she picked at her fingernails. Rose forced a smile at him. “Oh, Dean,” She brushed a strand of hair off of her face. Dean watched her fingers so as to not make her uncomfortable. She had pretty fingers. The polish on them was starting to chip. “You don’t need to tell me how bad-ass I was. I was cognizant enough to realize that all the shit was going down.” She held up her hand. “Why I decided to claw it to death is beyond me. Whatever booty juice that thing gave me has made me wicked dizzy.” She put a hand on her knee. “How did I get this rug burn?”  
“You dove at the other ghost and went through it, remember?”  
“Ohhhh…” She looked at her knee with renewed interest. “That’s nice.” She said in a whatever-you-say singsong voice. “Being kind of doped up is nice.” She put her head on her shoulder. “The world looks different from here.” She flipped her head onto her other shoulder. “But not as weird as from over here.” She laughed. “I can do all sorts of crazy stuff and just blame it on the meds!”  
He patted her head. “Okay, kiddo.” ‘Vivacious’ and ‘raving’ both came to his mind. Her hair was surprisingly soft for a hunter. Calling her ‘kiddo’ made him feel old. He stopped touching her head. “What did you really think that I was going to tell you?”  
She ignored him. “Where’s Sam?”  
He scoffed, “Your boyfriend’s checking out of the Hotel California.”  
Rose had rolled her eyes. “Colossus is not my boyfriend.”  
“Wow, Rose, I’m hurt.” Sam had come up behind them. His gangly frame dominated over them.   
Rose held up a hand for Sam to pull her up. “Sam, you will always be my love, but, alas, my heart belongs to Christian Bale.”  
Sam laughed and waved a note. “Well, speaking of Psychos, I’m out, A.M.A. as the lady at the front desk told me.” He pulled her up with one hand.   
“The hell does ‘AMA’ mean?”  
Rose spoke up before Sam could. “Sam is out against medical advice.” She tsked. “Dean and I should be safe from your mental shenanigans unless you go all ‘Girl, Interrupted’ again.”  
Dean stood up without assistance. “Yeah, well that’s comforting. Now I have two psychos to deal with.” He shot a finger at both of them. “Who wants to get drunk?” Sam rolled his eyes and got into the car. Dean remembered making a face at him. Rose was already opening the door to the impala when Dean caught her elbow. “Seriously, Rose, you’re cool, though?”  
Her eyes went hard and her face grew fixed. “Dean,” Rose leaned back from him and began to get in the car. “Everything’s okay.” She smiled at him, and, for the first time, he saw her public smile. She would whip it out whenever he tried to get to know her a little better. It was all full of regret solidified with a few bad lies.  
Sam snorted from the front seat. She settled in the back and put on her seatbelt. “Let’s get some real food. That’s something to drink to.”  
Rose looked up at Dean and nodded at him. He shut the door behind her with his own public smile on his face. Her expression when she had watched the orderly slit his wrists was tattooed onto Dean’s eyelids. Her deer-in-the-headlights eyes and the way that her hands twitched on the ground blinded him whenever he blinked. She had gotten paler than he had ever seen her go before, even when she had been sick after Cas’ Grace. Rose hadn’t been okay, Dean had decided, at least not by a longshot.


	4. IV.

Rose woke up two more times before dawn. Both times left him up for hours to stare at the ceiling and think. God, he hated being in his room. What had once been a room for his very own for the first time since he was four had turned into the place where he had gone off cavorting with Crowley for half a year. He blasted Led Zeppelin in his ears to drown out the sound of his thoughts. He was still used to only half of the bed after she had left. The part where he had been reborn as a demon was where Rose had slept after giving Cas her Grace.  
Been a long time been a long time been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely time.  
After she had left, Dean had the insatiable desire to find her. He had dragged Sam up and down the contiguous forty-eight in every bar and safe house that they could search. Everywhere was the same nothing. No one had seen her, or heard of her. Charlie was their final lead; Rose and Charlie had been close, but even Charlie had only seen her on her way out of the world. They had even gone into Canada on Sam’s weird hunch that she had been hunting a Wendigo that they had overlooked.   
Dean rolled onto his side to be away from her half of the bed. It was odd remembering that she was only twenty feet away, and that Cas was watching over her. No one was going to let her slip away again. Sam might want to throw her out on her heels, but he had believed in lost causes before, so Rose couldn’t be that much of a stretch. At least she wasn’t a Rugarou.   
The clock on his nightstand had said ten fifteen. By the rules of any normal day, he would have been up hours ago to start on his routine. He and Sam had been hunting something in the hours before Cas’ frantic call. Maybe he should get up and pretend to work on the case.   
He flipped back onto his back and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. When he had dreamt the night before, it had only been of strange memories of Rose’s rescue. She would leer at him with bloodstained teeth, calling herself ‘Rosie’, and digging the tiny knife down her arm. When she would die in his dreams, he would wake up gasping for breath and trying to blink away the feeling behind his eyes. In other dreams, she would turn her head to the side and slide a hand down underneath his shirt. After this, his heart would be pounding and the icy feeling in his stomach would also be affecting other regions of his body.  
He didn’t want to think about her anymore. After two years of her absence, he had finally started to enjoy his job again. Sam had also gotten less sullen, so hunting with him had been almost fun. The thirst for beer in the back of his brain was starting to come back. He needed something to numb the stupid thoughts in his brain.   
Dean propped himself onto one elbow to stare at his door. He had opened it ajar after Rose’s last nightmare so he would be able to react more quickly, instead of being the last one to get in there. He hated the blank look on her face and the fearful tears that had rolled down her face. Christ, he hated almost everything about her in the past forty-two hours. Half of him wished that she would have stayed in whatever hole that she had crawled into and rotted there.   
His ears rang after he took off the headphones to lay them down on the bed. The sound curled up back to him, diminished in its clarity from the distance.   
“Dean?” She had said it softly in the dark.  
“Yeah?” He had grunted back. She had woken him during the middle of a nice dream. The smell of fish and pines was still on his brain.  
Her voice was small,” I’m sorry.”  
“F’what?” He could see the lake clearly in his mind. The chair that he had sat on was out on a dock. It had been eerily familiar.  
“For taking up so much of your room.”  
He had laughed louder than he had meant to. The sounds of it echoed around the room to resound in his ears. “Bullshit. What’s the matter?” He propped himself up on his elbow to look at her outline. She looked beautiful in the dark.  
“If you wanted me to leave, you would tell me, right?” Her head shifted to look at him. “I wouldn’t want to stay if you or Sam wanted me to go. I—I’ve been here for a while now, and I,” She raked a hand through her hair. He watched it fan back and fall onto his pillow. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”   
His mouth was dry, so his voice was raspy. “What the hell made you think of that?” The alarm clock was behind her head, so he made an exaggerated display of leaning over her body, resting on top of her with enough force to make her giggle. “And at freaking four fourteen in the morning? Christ, Rose. Oh, whoops. I didn’t see you there.” He rolled off of her, but kept one of his fingers curled around some of her hair. “Do you want to leave?”   
“No.” Her voice was small again. She cleared her throat and scooted in closer to him. “I just didn’t want to overstay--”  
He cut her off. “Now, I’m fine with you here, but Sam…Sam might be the problem. He’s secretly in love with you.”  
Rose’s face lit up with a grin. “Sam? My Sam?”  
He snorted. “What do you mean, ‘your Sam’? He’s my brother!”  
“And my friend. Wow. Things might get really awkward now.”  
Dean leaned back onto his pillow. “Just do him a favor, and don’t lead him on. Sammy is very delicate.” She laughed, and his continued, “No, I’m serious. I’m serious, Rose. Sam is over the moon; I’ve never seen him so happy. He’ll definitely want you to move along over if things don’t change.”  
Rose leaned her head onto his chest and his next snarky comment died in his throat. She was warm to the touch. “Don’t you think Sam can take care of himself?” The light from outside the door eclipsed her eyes in golden splotches that echoed back at him. He wiped a strand of hair off of her face. She smiled at him. “I think…” She traced the tip of her finger in swirls in cold swirls on his chest that bubbled into goose bumps. “That Sam will be okay.” She started kissing his chest. The goose bumps followed wherever she went, and especially as she went down his chest—  
There was a bang on the wall and he opened his eyes. There was an ache in the back of his throat. Now that there was movement, he felt immobilized. People whispered in the hallways too loudly to be covert near where Rose was sleeping.   
“Where are you going?” Sam’s voice was strained.   
Dean hung onto the silence. He had heard her speak before, but not coherently that morning.  
Her voice was raspy. “I have to go.”   
“Where are you going?” Sam got louder.   
“Goddamn it, Sam, I have to leave.” Her voice grew closer to him. “I gotta get out of here.” Now Dean could see the bloody back of her hair. “Now before he wakes--”  
His timing deserved an award. As he left his room, Rose bumped into the back of his body. She leaned her hand back into his chest to catch herself. His body sparked at her touch.  
“Dean.”   
She was still turned away from him, so he stared at Sam’s pale, pained face. Rose let go of him as if she had been shocked. The world was a little paler and his chest felt constricted as she turned around slowly and edged a pace or two away from him. The dark blood had dried on her face in odd splotches around her nose and mouth. Where she had cried, during the night, there were streaks of her normal, pale skin on her cheeks.   
His voice was gravelly. “Where are you going?”  
She swallowed. Her eyes were beady and scared. If he looked closely enough, he probably would see that her pupils weren’t the same size. Her gaze was slow. “I have to go. Right now.”   
Rose took the half step in between them to move past his body. He felt himself slide over to block her path. She nearly ran into him again, but put up her hands to stop her inertia. There weren’t goose bumps on him anymore. “Rose, you’re confused.” He spoke slowly, “You’re hurt and you need to go back in there to rest. Okay?”  
She wouldn’t look at him; her gaze bored into his shoulder. Rose seemed to droop. “I’m lucid…and I won’t tell you again.” She tried to move past him again, and he matched her motions. “I have to go.” She was still staring at his shoulder.   
“Where?” His voice went lower.  
Her eyes darted down to her bloody hands. “I have to go back to the motel; I have to get my car; I just have to get out of here. Happy?” He didn’t want to, but as she attempted to pass him again, he put his hands on her shoulders. “Get off of me!” She wrenched herself out of his grip, but still refused to meet his gaze. Her warmth was on his hands. It curled off of his skin and back into the air.  
She was there, in the bunker, in front of him after all this time, and he still couldn’t touch her. His fingers ached with the thought that she had thrown him away. Rose’s eyes were poised to look down at his shoulder again. Why the fuck wouldn’t she look at him?  
“Yeah, we’re happy,” Sam’s voice was hard.   
Rose’s inability to look at Dean apparently didn’t extend to Sam, whom she glared at. “Good.” She paused a beat, and her face softened. “Say your peace, Sam.”  
“What?” Sam’s eyes crinkled at the corners, while his mouth twisted into a mocking smile. His demeanor dared her to speak again.  
Rose was looking at the wall between them. “I said ‘say your peace, Sam’. If you won’t let me go until you’ve said what you need to, then I’ll wait for you.”  
Sam scoffed, “How considerate,” Her face was blank of everything except blood. “Did you learn manners overnight? Waiting isn’t really your strong suit, is it?” The mocking smile was still on his face. Dean hadn’t seen him so worked up about something in years. “Are you really going to go again, without explaining anything? Just ride off into the sunset with no help, no money, no car, just jack shit. I have no idea what kind of cultish crap you’ve been up to lately, but you aren’t going to last an hour among us humans looking like that.” He gestured to her bloody face. “You’ve got something everywhere.” He paused again. “Well, jump in anytime, Rose. The water is great.”  
She straightened. “Do you want to fight?” Her voice was strange. “I’ll fight you if that is what you want.”  
“Well, then, fighting you would be the most we’ve seen you in almost two years, so I think I should go for it. Why did you leave?”  
“I had to go. Next.” Rose edged her weight onto the wall. Her hands shook at her sides.   
“Why did you go?” Sam was loud.  
“I said I had to go. That’s enough.” She had forced her hands behind her back and leaned against them. Dean could still see her shake. The finality in her tone only goaded Sam on.  
“Why did you leave?” He was louder.  
Her head swiveled almost too quickly at Sam to be normal. “Learn to accept the answers that you are given. What and why I do or have done anything in the past is none of your goddamn business. If you and your witless brothers are really in the business of helping people, then thank you.” She pretended to bow. “Thank you, Sam Winchester; for all that you have done for me. But, know this: I did not ask for your help yesterday, nor do I need it now.” She stopped to suck down a breath. She rasped, “This is the part where you call me a nasty name and I walk out.”  
“What happened to you?” Sam had stopped yelling.  
She blew a piece of hair off of her face. “Sam, I want to thank you, truly, for what has happened these past few years. And I really have enjoyed my stay, but I must be movin’ on.” She smiled through the quote. Blood was still in her teeth.   
“For Christ’s sake, Rose, you died a few hours ago. If you don’t care enough to stay here for us, then, fine, just stay for a little bit.” Sam was pleading. “Take a shower. We can lend you clothes and money.” Sam was totally spit-balling here, just saying anything that he could to slow Rose down. “You don’t have to stay any longer than you need to.” He forced himself to laugh. “No one wants you here anymore than you do.”  
Rose scoffed, “I didn’t die. I’m perfectly fine, look.” She brought out her dark red sleeve and began to roll it up to the elbow. Cas’ Grace had done its job. The skin where the cut should have been was as white and unblemished as a marble statue. She ran a finger down the side of her arm. The smile started to slide off of her face. “But Melinda stuck me…I was….there was so much blood.” She put a hand to her temple, and the smile was completely gone.  
She turned her head to look at Dean for the first time that morning. All of the bravado and rudeness that she had put up as a front against him was slipping away from her face. There used to be little, yellow circles of light that had reflected in her eyes that had dimmed past recognition. She had ripped a hole straight through the middle of his gut, and that wound had begun to fester.  
“No.” Rose brought a hand to rake through her hair, but the blood was too thick, so she scratched her fingernails at it. Her voice was breathy. “I wasn’t dead; I couldn’t have been. We were in the car, and Cas was there, but I was dreaming.”  
Dean shook his head. “Rose, you died.”  
“But I was dreaming. You can’t dream in Hell, Dean. There’s no way that I could’ve been dead.” She smiled again earnestly. “You must be mistaken.” When he tried to protest, her anger flared. “But I was dreaming!”   
“Then you weren’t in Hell.” He said softly.   
“Then that was… heaven…” Realization broke onto her face. “Then he brought me back.” She turned away from him, to look at Sam. Her face was set anger. “You son of a bitch!” Rose saw him before he had appeared.   
Cas had his hands up immediately. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”  
Rose wasted no prelude and immediately charged at the angel, past Dean and Sam, to seize Cas’ shirt and pin him against the nearest wall. Dean flashed back to the pizza man before he could see that a different kind of passion was fueling Rose. She began to snarl in a language other than English that could only be Enochian.   
“Rose!”   
Sam went over to try and pry Rose off of Cas, but she was undeterred. After she was through cussing Cas out in another language, Dean felt safe easing Rose off of Cas. He hadn’t even realized that his hand was on her until she shrugged it off again.  
“You…” she was too angry to form a coherent English sentence. She backed up a pace and tried to brush through her bloody hair. “Your word is shot to hell.” Rose breathed heavily. She leaned a hand against the wall to steady herself. “I can fix this, I can--” Rose turned on her heel to face Cas again. “I can give it back.”   
“Don’t---” Cas had his hands up again. The purple circles underneath his eyes were back, and the wrinkles on his face were set in apprehension. Rose took a deep breath. Deep in her throat, something was building up, and it welled up into her eyes. Cas was over to her faster than any human could move. He fastened his hand over her mouth. “If you do this, you’ll die.” The blue light grew brighter; Dean felt his hand circle around Rose’s wrist, again almost without his consent. Cas tightened his hand around Rose’s mouth, and the light began to ebb away.  
Rose’s feet fell to the ground with a clunk. Her whole frame had been drawn upward when she tried to expel her Grace, similar to when her body had flown up during her exorcism. God, their lives were fucked up. He let go of her wrist.  
Cas let go after Dean did. Rose didn’t protest anymore. She even allowed Cas’ hand to rest on her shoulder. The look behind her eyes was worse than death. “So it’s over.” She said quietly.  
“What’s over?” Sam had his arms crossed.   
Rose swallowed and looked straight through Sam’s shoulder. “I’m going back to bed.” And, with that, she shrugged Cas’ hand off, more gently than she had removed Dean’s hand.  
Sam repeated himself. “What’s over, Rose?”  
She rested her hand on the wall next to them. Most of the weight in her body fell onto her left side. She had slept for so long, but was still exhausted. “Why would you do it, Castiel? Didn’t I tell you not to?” Her hands were shaking violently against the grey steel. She turned to look at Cas. “Why’d you do this?”  
Cas looked almost as dead as she did. “Don’t make me say it.”  
Rose’s face screwed up in pain. She looked away from Cas, and Dean could see that the tears were back in her eyes.  
Cas looked more desperate, “Should I have let you die?”  
“Yes.”  
Cas froze. They all froze. Her voice was too soft to be kidding.  
“Don’t talk like that.” Sam’s voice was sharp.   
Rose stood up straighter; she was still facing the wall. “Don’t get sentimental.”   
“So it’s sentiment that makes me not want you to die?” Sam hadn’t calmed down. “Sentiment is a bad thing now? You didn’t mind to get all sentimental when we were all in this together.”  
Rose’s lips were forming sentences that she was unable or unwilling to articulate. She was looking down at what seemed to be Sam’s knee. The hand that she had pressed up against the wall tried in vain to stay flat.   
“Do you even remember what you were like? What we were like?”  
Sam needed to stop talking. Rose had gone back to paleness that worried Dean more than her snarky words. Rose could only be wound up so far before she snapped. The last time that he had seen her so upset, it had been the moments before she had left, after getting her kid sister’s phone call from hell.   
Sam was pissed, and rightly so, but he should have—“Shut up.” Dean wanted to be angry at something that wasn’t Rose, so he faced Sam and masked his face in anger. “This isn’t helping.”  
Sam sneered. “Are you serious? Well, now you have to see, Rose,” Sam was looking to get decked. “If you needed any more definitive proof that you’re a part of this fam---”  
“Don’t you dare say ‘family’, Sam Winchester.” Rose was back, her voice had gained traction. She held up a finger. “Don’t.” Her voice caught. “Just don’t, Sam, okay?”   
Dean’s anger ebbed away. Something was really fucked up deep inside of Rose. Something must have happened to her in the years that she had been hiding from them or doing God knows what with God knows who, all only to end up, ungrateful and broken, at their doorstep again.  
Sam frowned. Rose looked away from all of them, turned around, and walked slowly back into her room without saying a word. Cas met Dean’s eyes, but he shook his head as if to say that they shouldn’t pursue. Sam’s mouth was slightly open, and he followed Rose up until the threshold.   
“Do you need anything?” Sam’s voice had finally returned to normal.   
In the shadows by the bed, Rose shook her head. She sat down and then lay curled up in the bed, facing away from them. Her shoulders were shaking, but Dean couldn’t hear her cry. He knew that if he went in there now, there wouldn’t be anything left of Rose to salvage. The last time that she had cried real tears in front of the three of them she had stormed away and never came back.   
Cas reached in to pull the door closed, but Dean stopped him before it could catch in the lock. “I’m going to wait.” He caught Sam’s eye. “Have you called her yet?” His voice was low.  
Sam shook his head. “Holly wouldn’t pick up. She had disconnected the number. Charlie’s on her way, though.”  
“And Garth?”   
Cas interjected, “I can talk to Garth and the baby.”  
Rose’s cough shook, then stopped. She breathed weirdly, as if her hand was over her mouth.   
Cas’ eyes were still on her door. “Are they still in the same house?”  
Cas knew perfectly well where Garth and the baby were, or so Dean assumed. He said a ‘yes’ and something noncommittal to Sam about food and the case. If he did anything productive that morning, it would be to drink himself sane staring at her door and waiting for her to come out. He wouldn’t allow her to leave again. It was as ingrained in him as his sense of right and left. He’d be damned if she would leave again, not like she did before.   
His thoughts brewing, Dean went into their old room—his room—and pulled out a chair. It scraped loudly on the floor. Screw courtesy. If she wanted to leave again, she could leave over their dead bodies. He planted the chair squarely in front of the door and leaned back. This time, he wouldn’t have any music in his ears to take away the sounds of his thoughts. He’d sit back and enjoy the evil bastards flying around, while he waited for Rose to open the door.


	5. V.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lemons. Lots of lemons.

“So, what now?” Two years earlier, Rose had rubbed her phone between her palms and ignored Dean’s persistent gaze all the while. She flinched when he directed the question at her. It had been two days since he had rescued her from a rogue jinni, but she still looked exhausted.  
“Me?” When he nodded, she spoke, “Well, it seems that---damn, I don’t know, Dean. Maybe we should wait outside the house?”  
Sam shook his head further down the table. “No, we can’t go back yet. That girl will call the cops.”  
Cas wasn’t sitting. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and he faced the stairs that led out of the bunker’s front room. “It would be better for us to stop the demon child before it kills again, regardless of law enforcement.”  
Dean smiled humorlessly at Cas. “Well then, Captain Obvious, that sounds great.”  
“Don’t talk like that.” Rose said, hard. They all turned to look at her, and she rolled her eyes. The leg that she had usually thrown up on the table she held below the desk, shaking like a junkie in need of a fix. She blushed at Dean’s weird look. “Castiel is right; we need to watch the--” Her phone buzzed mid rotation between her palms and she fumbled with it so much that it fell straight onto the table. She turned it over eagerly. “It’s just Garth’s number.” Rose deflated. She pressed the ‘ignore’ button. Her eyes were glinting.   
“Shouldn’t you get it?”  
Rose shook her head and began the phone rotation between her hands. “No, it’s probably just the baby. Norma Jean, in her lovely two-year-old mind probably thinks that prank-calling me again is hilarious. This’ll be the third night…” Her voice trailed away. “Nope, the fourth night in a row.”  
Sam rubbed at his eyes, nonplussed at Rose’s nerves. “Is it midnight already?”  
“A minute past.” Cas’ voice was peculiar. Although Dean wasn’t looking back at Cas specifically, he could feel his friend’s eyes on him. “What’s the date?”  
Rose didn’t start at the odd question. “October the fourth.” She passed the phone from one hand to another. The screen lit up that Garth had left her a voicemail. “I’ll get that later.” She looked up at Sam. “Well, shall we?” The shadow of a black eye was still lightly tattooed onto her skin.  
Sam looked as if he had decided to notice Rose’s weirdness. “Shall we what?”  
She kicked back in her chair, putting her leg up on the desk just to appear normal, or so it would seem. Her voice was calmer now. “How about a few of us go up to the girl’s house, and the other two go back to that creepy witch’s hut off of the interstate. I need to pick up some more lamb’s blood after our tryst with Senor Djinn.” She looked at Sam’s curious expression. “Take a picture, Sam, it’ll last longer.”  
Sam glanced at Dean. Rose was still nursing an elbow after a case with a djinn a few days beforehand. She was still pale from being held up in what she had called a ‘hippie sex dungeon’. Rose hadn’t even allowed Cas to heal it right away. There was something about a promise that he had made. Since they had returned to the bunker, she had been avoiding Dean. It was conclusive evidence enough for him to insist that she sit out the case and recover.  
“Rose,” Cas broke in without encouragement before Dean could begin. “Perhaps you should--”  
Rose’s phone began to buzz again. She flipped it over to look at it just as quickly as before. She stood and slid the phone on, saying, “I have to take this.” She ignored all of their winces when she slammed her battered legs back onto the ground. Her face looked far off, and her eyes bore straight through him to the kitchen. Her cheeks were flushed.  
“I can’t hear you.” Rose’s voice wobbled from inside the kitchen.  
Dean looked over to Sam, his voice low, “She can’t come with us back to that house.”  
Sam shrugged. “Well, I’m not going to tell her that. When can you ever get Rose off of anything?” Sam still looked worried nevertheless. “Does she usually skip calls from Garth?”  
Cas had his arms crossed. His eyes had followed Rose into the kitchen. “Her mind was fragmented after the djinn touched her.” He switched his gaze over to Sam. “It was disturbing.” Dean’s stomach turned.  
Sam shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Don’t ask her about it.” He looked at Dean. “Trust me.”  
Dean’s anger began to flare up. “Trust? What’s trust if you all are keeping secrets?”  
“Don’t give me that crap. She asked me not to say anything.”  
“Then why are you even talking about it?”  
“Cas was the one who brought it up.”  
“Don’t bring Cas into this. Why are you and Rose keeping secrets?” Dean could still remember how Rose had clung onto Cas’ shoulders, her eyes white and wide, and her voice raspy saying “Oh God, oh God, is it over?”  
Sam shrugged again. “Dude, she’s your girlfriend.” Sam tried to smile at Dean. “I’m just the third wheel over here.”  
Dean felt his stomach twist. It was still true, but Sammy’s smirk still pissed him off more than anything. Rose’s voice was a low murmur in the kitchen; Dean couldn’t hear her voice specifically.  
“Are you having fun whoring around?”  
Dean’s head swung so quickly at Cas that his neck hurt. “What?”  
“They’re talking in Enochian.” Cas paused. “Did she say who it was on the other end?”  
Sam’s face drained of color. “Do you think that it could be her sister?” He scrambled to his feet when Cas’ brow furrowed again. “Rose!”  
Dean mimicked his brother and followed him into the kitchen. Cas walked calmly behind them.  
Rose was hanging onto the counter with one hand. The other was securing the phone next to her ear. The Enochian that Dean had heard in the past from angels had been slow and guttural; hell, he could pick up a phrase or two from Cas whenever he and Hannah needed some private angel pow-wow time. The voice on the other end flew up and down faster than most people spoke English. And Rose drank in every word. Her eyes were wide and fearful, like they had been after her djinn dream.   
“Rose.” Dean tried to hold Rosemary’s gaze, but she was far away.  
The voice switched to English. “Can they hear you, Rosemary? Can those fucking hunters hear you? Great—can they hear me?!”  
Rose swallowed. Her voice was shaking. “Yes.”  
“‘Mary-Mary quite contrary; How does your garden grow?’ Tell me, Mary, are they worth it?” The other voice was slick. Rose looked like she was going to throw up.  
“That’s not my name.”  
“Answer me, you dumb cunt. Are they worth it? Are they worth you selling me out? I am your blood, Rosemary, your blood!”  
Rose was biting the inside of her thumb. Tears were going down her face, but her voice did not wobble. “What do you want?”  
“I’d like an answer, for once. Answer me straight: are the Winchesters and their boyfriend worth leaving me alone with him?”  
“Rose, you don’t have to do this.” Sam had gotten down on Rose’s eye line and held out his hand for the phone. Dean felt as if he couldn’t speak. The girl’s voice was familiar and hypnotic. This girl held Rose in her palm, a remarkable feat for anyone to have caught a tempest in a hand.  
Rose shook her head and Sam and looked up at the ceiling. The whites of her eyes had turned pink from crying. “I had to.”   
“You left me alone with that son of a bitch and you are telling me that you had to?” The girl’s voice grew sweeter. “‘I’m gonna take care of you, Sami’ ‘No one will ever touch you again, Sami. I swear.’ ‘You and me: all there ever was and all that we’ll ever need.’ ‘We’re family, Sami.’ ‘We won’t have to do this job anymore.’ ‘I’m going to take care of you, Sami!’”   
“Everything that I have ever done has been for us.” Rose was staring away from Sam. She tried to move around Sam, but Cas stood in her way.   
“Ha!” Sami cackled on the other end. “And how was leaving me and betraying the family part of that?”  
Rose closed her eyes. “What good am I to you dead?”  
Sami laughed, “Hell, better than now. Dead would be better than this!”  
Rose put a hand over her mouth. She was shaking. “Don’t—don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that to me.”  
“Look at your hunters with those pretty brown eyes of yours, Rosemary.” Rose opened her eyes. Dean saw her eyes meet Cas’. She was pale: what wasn’t covered by her black eye was wet. Cas looked at Rose with a softness that Dean had never really noticed before. His arms, which were usually at his sides, were stretched out towards her. She shook her head and burrowed deeper into her phone.   
“Are you looking, Rosemary? Tell me, who are you looking at?”  
Rose cleared her throat. “Does it matter? They’re all the same to you.”  
“Oh, but they aren’t all created equal to you, Mary-Mary. Tell me,” Sami’s voice was sickly sweet. “You still sweet on Dean?”  
Rose straightened up. She glanced over at him, mouth horrified at her sister’s intuition. “I have family here now.”  
“So, I’m gonna take that as a ‘yes’. Well, Mary-Mary, look at that cutie and riddle me this: are the Winchesters worth leaving your poor little Sami alone with the craziest bastard you know?”  
“I can’t come back yet.”  
“Are they worth more to you than I am?”  
Rose didn’t speak a moment, and then choked out, “Don’t ask me that. You’re my sister.”  
“Then fucking act like it.” Sami sounded like she was close to tears too. “I won’t even waste the breath to tell you to go to hell. But, here’s what you can do for me…”  
Sam looked worriedly over at Dean. He was behind Rose by a few feet, and could probably take the phone and end the call if he wanted to. Cas’ soft eyes were still drinking Rose in, and by Cas’ face the taste was unpleasant.  
“Anything.” Rose stopped crying and stared straight ahead.  
“Go take a bath and never get out. Pull a mom. And never talk to me again.”  
“Sami,” Rose’s voice squeaked out her sister’s name before her face crumbled.   
There was a commotion on the other end, and Sami screamed. The next voice to hiss in the phone was not Sami’s, but what sounded like an angry drunk. His voice was slow, “Don’t ever call this number again… Stay away from us or you won’t be the only body lyin’ around.” Sami screamed again in pain and Rose cried out, but in Enochian instead of English. The phone call severed with nothing on the other end. Rose stood with hunched shoulders. She wept like she had been shot in the gut.   
Dean walked around the island and past Cas, who was dumbfounded. “Rose--”  
“Jesus Christ, ‘Rose’ is not my name!” She yelled through her tears. “My name---is Rosemary Kline. Nobody but you people call me ‘Rose’.” She wiped her face with her hand. Dean hadn’t known that Rose could produce so many tears out of anger. “I have to go find them. He—he can’t hurt her again. I’m gonna stop it--”  
Sam put his hand on her arm, but she shrugged him off. “Rose, you can’t listen to them. We’ll go somewhere else for a while and you can lay low. We’ll take care of you.”  
Rose talked as if she didn’t hear him, “She’s just upset, and that’s it. Sami’s just upset.” She swallowed and looked up at Sam. “It’s her birthday today; she’s fourteen, so she has a right to be mad. She can hate me, it’ll be okay.” Her face crumbled again for a moment. “Oh God, what if he hurts her?”  
Dean reached out his hand to touch her, and she allowed him to pull her in close to his chest. Her breathing was ragged and her body shook. This was bad, far worse than he had ever seen her cry in the past. Then, it had only been a few stolen tears that she had laughed away, as if tears had been a sort of weakness that she didn’t want to have to show. Even upset, she was still warm; to bring her in was the closest they had been in days. Pressed against his heart, he could feel hers beating.  
Rose was still holding onto the phone in her fist. Her hand shook from behind his back. She disentangled herself from him without looking at his face. She took a step back from him, and wiped her eyes with her phone-less hand. Then, without further ado, she slammed the phone onto the ground with all the force that she could muster. Rose brought down her bare foot to shatter the glass of the front completely. The screen had gone full black.  
She picked up all of the pieces with silent fingers. The bottom of her foot was bleeding, but she ignored it.  
Cas tried to touch her, but she jerked away. “No. You gave me your word, Castiel.” She picked up the phone in total and threw what was left up into the air. Before Dean could react, Rose had whipped out her gun and shot at the pieces. The bullet went straight through what was left of the phone before it lodged itself into the wooden door. It was a perfect shot. Dean had ducked, and saw Cas do the same.  
“Jesus, Rose!” Sam swore and ducked in anticipation of the ricochet. “We’re in a metal bunker.”  
Rose’s voice was flat. She hadn’t ducked. There was no ricochet. “Cas could have fixed you.”  
Cas frowned even deeper. “What happened if I would have been shot?”  
She held up the gun and didn’t look back. “No special bullets today.” She walked over to the door to touch where the hot bullet had penetrated the wood. Her hand that held the gun flopped at her side. The gun was still taut in her hand, and she was still crying. Dean walked behind her and eased his hand into hers. She relaxed into his touch and allowed him to take the gun out of her hand. When her hand wasn’t holding the gun anymore, he slid in his fingers to reach hers. She didn’t squeeze back.   
Her bloody footprints were on the floor. She twirled the ring that she kept on her left hand in a circle. Tears slowly fell down her face. Half of it was turned towards them. Something dark had settled in her eyes. If he had known then what would have happened in the ensuing hours, he would have never let her out of his sight.  
Cas cleared his throat, “Do they know where you are now?”  
Rose nodded. “They’ve known for a while. You’ve seen the wardings?”  
Dean looked at Rose, confused, “What wardings?” Sam had his head tilted in confusion at Cas and Rose, so it wasn’t just him that was out of the loop.  
Rose continued to twist her ring, letting go of Dean’s hand. “There’s Enochian graffiti all over town. They’ve been here. I haven’t seen them, but they’re here.” Fresh tears welled up into her eyes, “I shouldn’t have stayed for so long.”  
He couldn’t have spoken any faster if he had tried, “We’ll fix it.”  
Sam nodded. “Rose, we won’t let anything happen.”  
She snorted. “Colossus, don’t be sentimental.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and stared at Sam. A wave of realization hit her saying what Dean now knew had been to leave as fast as she could for as far as she could go before they had noticed. Rose’s hand traced up to her hair to rake her hairline back under her fingernails. “I—I think that I’m going to go lie down.” Rose forced herself to smile wearily at them all. “You guys can go hunt it all up in that bitch. Go all Biblical, or something.” She opened the door a little to pick up the bullet slug. It was still hot, so she kicked it aside with her bloody foot so that it rolled underneath the door.   
Sam was the first to speak. “If you want to stay, one of us will stay behind.” He kept glancing down at Rose’s foot. She grimaced at the blood when she followed his gaze down. She picked up her foot and leaned against the door. Rose still swayed a little. If only he would have known.  
Rose glanced down at her foot. “You don’t have to do that.” She opened up a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker. Sloshing the liquid around, she opened it up, poured a little in her hand, and then dripped a few droplets onto her foot. “Fuck.” She grimaced. “Goddamn homemade shit.”  
Dean tried to make his thoughts come out coherently. “Hey, can’t you let Cas do that?”  
Rose took the bottle up to her mouth and took a swig. “N’thanks, I’m good.” If Rose was alarmed at the looks that Cas was sending Dean’s way, she didn’t show it; all that was on her face was fatigue. The alcohol was bringing back odd color to her cheeks.  
“Should you really shouldn’t drink tha--”  
Rose took another swig and said, “Cas, you don’t have to worry about me. Okay?” She looked down at the floor; her face shook a little with the stress. The bottle in her hand shook. Rose crossed her arms, everything still shook. She peeked up at him from behind a piece of her hair and raised an eyebrow.  
Cas’ face hardened a little. “Okay,”  
She swallowed and put her foot back on the ground. “What will you all do? You know…” her voice trailed off. “That doesn’t matter. Stay safe.” Rose tipped the bottle back and took a final swig before shuddering. “Y’all buy some bad alcohol.” She capped the bottle and screwed on the cap.  
Sam was still looking at Rose. “Can they get into the bunker?”  
Rose shuffled around the other bottles of whiskey that they had left untouched from throughout the years. After Rose had come, Dean had less of a cause to drink them. He stared into the cabinet as she put it away.   
“No.” Her voice was small. “They’re just waiting me out.” She turned back around. “Sami must be close, otherwise she wouldn’t have risked calling me; she’d have waited for—Dad—to be asleep or something.”   
The words made Dean’s stomach dip. He crossed his arms. “Then we’re stuck.”  
Cas shook his head. “Not necessarily. The wardings are old by a few months at least.” He looked at Rose with kind eyes. “She can’t be near here; I would have heard.”  
Rose turned back around and grabbed the whiskey again. “Well,” she unscrewed the cap again. “Shit.” She took a sip and coughed into her hand. “I’m going to bed.” The tears were back in her eyes, and none of them took it as a reason to push it. Rose walked slowly out of the kitchen and towards their room, Cas at her heels.  
Sam approached Dean just after Cas had crossed the threshold. “Cas and I will go back to the house. You okay with staying here?”  
Dean smiled humorlessly at his brother, “Well, where else should I be?” He sighed. “Call me if anything weird happens.”  
Sam inclined his head at Rose and Cas, who were talking just outside of the door to her and Dean’s bedroom. “Weirder than this?” His voice was heavy. “Take care of her while we’re gone.” He frowned.   
Dean tried to smile at him. “Whatever, man, she’s your friend.”  
Sam smiled in spite of himself. “And your girlfriend.” He directed his attention to Cas and Rose. Dean’s gaze followed Sam’s.   
As per usual, they were standing still staring at each other. Neither of them seemed to want to break eye contact, even though Rose was still slightly teary. “Stop looking.” She flashed Cas a tentative wink before glancing back at Sam and Dean.   
Sam smiled at her, and seemed to try and put some conviction into it. “We’ll be back before you wake up.”   
Rose nodded. “Bye, Sam.”  
If those two words had sounded peculiar to his mind, at the time he didn’t notice. She had taken a deep breath and turned back into the room. The tears were back on her face. The Johnny Walker bottle was still hanging from her fist.   
Dean nodded at Cas and Sam before following Rose into their room. Cas hadn’t met his gaze before Dean closed the door. That thought had settled weirdly with him. What did Cas have to be put off about? Dean had frowned at the door before turning around. The confusion at Cas’ look should have been the last thing that he remembered with without a sense of dread of that which came next.  
She was sitting on their bed, hunched over and taking another sip out of the bottle. Rose tossed it back without flinching, as she had done before, and without any regret. When he gave her a look, she stopped. “Don’t give me a lecture.”   
He shook his head, and held out his hand for the bottle. “I’m not.” He took a swig of his own: the booze warmed up his body and numbed his mind. He had wanted to just go to sleep and forget all about Rose’s phone call from hell. “’Sides, I can’t let you drink alone.”   
She reached out for the bottle, and he gave it to her, with a smile saying, “Hey isn’t this a little much for you?” Rose took a gulp. “Rose.” Her eyes were closed. The black one looked puffier than it had before. “This isn’t going to help you.”   
“Trouble is, Dean, I don’t give a damn.” She laid half of head in her hands. The side that was tilted up at him featured a blossoming black eye. Rose’s shoulders shook. “I just don’t want to think right now.”   
He leaned off of the door to pick the bottle up off of the floor. “Why did you pick up the phone?”  
Rose closed her eyes. “Because it’s her birthday, Dean,” She blinked and more tears came down her cheeks. “I didn’t want to miss her birthday.” She reached over behind her to grab a tissue from the box on her side. Her body stretched out long and languid. A bit of her bare stomach showed through a peek on the bottom of her shirt. Thoughts of straddling her hips and holding down her wrists into the soft down of the sheets flew into his mind. He tried to blink them away. Rose sat up, blew her nose, and then smiled at him like she knew his thoughts. “What?”  
He shook his head. “Nothing.” That was the last thing that Rose needed right now when her mind was so fucked up. He shouldn’t have thought it. “Do you want to go to bed?” The note of realization hit her, surprised, and she smiled again. But it was wrong, all wrong, and he put up his hands. “That’s not what I meant.”  
Rose stood up shakily. “I—I’m a big girl now, Dean. You don’t have to look out for me.”   
She swayed and he caught onto her arm. She wasn’t shaking him off now. He let go of her as quickly as he had touched her. She followed his hand with her eyes. When she looked up at him, he felt his stomach drop down to his feet. One of her eyes was truly dark under the weight of the black eye that he couldn’t have protected her from. She walked up close to him and put the whiskey bottle on the floor. She was next to his crotch from her descent upwards. Her hands never touched him, but he could feel her breath trace slowly down and up his leg. When she came back up to kiss him, he was already getting hard.  
Rose had noticed. “Well that’s quicker than usual.”   
His voice was breathy. “We shouldn’t do this now.” Rose and his body were working against him. She smelled like whiskey and tears, and yet tasted so sweet and soft on his mouth. They hadn’t fucked for almost a week and the ache was boring into his crotch like if she had gone away.   
“Nice try,” She nipped at his lower lip with her teeth because she knew that he hated the feeling, and then moved onto his neck. Her lips were soft and they nuzzled into him. Dean was falling and grabbing onto her was the only thing that he could reach.   
He tried to break free from her one last time, saying, “Rose, this isn’t how it should be.” But her cold hand had flown through a break in the buttons on his shirt. Above his undershirt, he could feel her fingers boring in circles onto his stomach that trailed downward to his belt buckle.   
“C’mon, honey, let’s do something we’ll regret in the morning.” Before he could protest, Rose had sunk down to her knees. Her face was eye level with his pulsing cock. She pushed him back into the door and he allowed his body to fall back with her. Her stumbling fingers fluidly slid open his belt and reached her warming hands between his thighs to touch the tip of his cockhead with her finger.   
“You ready?” She whispered.  
“Rose,” He breathed, and she began.  
His pants and underwear slid down his thighs, and she kissed it before slipping it into her mouth. He tried to reach a hand down to touch her silky hair, but she pushed him back, hard, against the door. Through intervals of sucking and moving it forward and backward in her throat, Rose slipped into their perfect rhythm. Dean’s hands were pressed flat against the door and his back slightly arched before he built up to a climax.   
“Rose.” He said breathlessly, and he heard her laugh and stop. “Rose--” He rasped out and looked down at her big brown eyes. She ran a finger down the side of his thigh.  
“Commercial break.”   
“No,” he babbled, “God, no, Rose.”  
She leaned back and cracked her neck, before giggling. “That was louder than I thought.” Her voice was low and sexy as hell. She nuzzled her lips into the soft skin on the inside of his hip and nibbled at the side of it. He was babbling again before he knew it. She broke away to breathe, and, cradling his balls, she put his cock back in her mouth.  
The rhythm grew faster as he got harder. When he felt like he was ready to come, he held her back. She whimpered; her eyes seemed bigger than normal. She blinked up at him. “Wait, Rose, wait.” She cocked her head to one side. Her lips were shaking from the anticipation. “I want you.” He mumbled.  
“What?” She rasped.   
Dean leaned his head back on the wood. “I said, ‘I want you’, Rose.” He gestured his head back at the bed. “I want you.” He repeated. “I want you to feel…” she nuzzled back into his thigh and the next words came out breathless, “to feel good.”   
“If you’re good, I’m good.” She kissed the inside of his thigh and licked her lips.  
That was more than he could take. With as much strength that he could allow, he pulled her up to him. Their fingers laced together, and she smiled at him. “If you need to come, honey, just come.”  
He tilted her chin up to his face. Dean kissed her with urgency. He tried to pull off her shirt as fast as he could. Rose helped as much as she could, but it still wasn’t fast enough. “Rose, I--” She ducked down again to bring her mouth around his cock just before he came. One of her arms was successfully outside of her shirt, and the other was still pinned to her side.   
Dean sighed with mingled relief and disappointment. He had wanted to finish inside of her, where he could feel her come with rushing passion at the same time that he did. He wanted her eyes to roll upward to the ceiling as she moaned his name into the air between their faces, and kissed him when it was over, so that they could start again. Maybe, if he was lucky enough, she would whisper that she loved him, saying ‘I love you, Dean Winchester’ with odd emphasis on whatever was the last word that she could choke out before her back arched against the mattress. Sometimes, he just wanted to demand that she said it, just so when he came it would be that much sweeter.  
He felt her grip his thighs tight as she swallowed. The pads of her fingers turned toward her fingernails down his thigh. That sent vibrations down into his twitching cock. When she turned the palms of her hands to rest on his thighs, he knew that she was ready for her turn. He held out a hand and pulled her up.  
“Where were we?”  
She laughed. “So debonair, Mr. Winchester,” She squealed a little when he dipped her backwards and pulled her back up to him. He felt the heat in his gaze, and she quieted down. “Dean…” She sighed into his neck, which goaded on his search to tear off every piece of clothes on her body.   
When he tried to free her trapped arm, she gasped in pain. The elbow injury that was still there hurt. He murmured his apologies and mixed in kisses down her exposed stomach. She leaned backwards as she had done before, and a twitch rocketed through his cock again. Taking off her jeans was easier now. He could get them down off of her ankles with practice. While his hands were busy, his mouth was occupied trying to nip at the inside of her hips. Her hands were threaded in through his hair. She pulled and released in synch with every move that his mouth made. When he was getting close, he felt her gasp.  
“Dean.” She whispered. “Dean—that is--” Her back arched and it was easy to pull her down on the bed. Her spread legs hung off the sides. Now, she had been rendered breathless. A low laugh rumbled in his throat. “F-fuck me, Dean,” she gasped. He started to tease her folds with the tip of his fingernail. Her legs shook and her back arched. “Oh my God. Whoa…” she breathed, “Oh God, Dean.”  
His mouth was moving faster on her clit. She was now in between fits of speechlessness. Rose’s fingers twitched on the sides of the bed. He could hear her toes curl on the ground beside him. He reached out a free hand to stroke the inside of her thighs, while using the other to massage the back of her leg. His teeth bit softly into her clit, and she cried out.  
He stopped and watched her face glow and sweat with pleasure. When she took her hand and squeezed his, then Dean knew to move his head back up towards hers. He kissed her lips softly. There was something in her that night that he could sense already that was amiss. Dean remembered thinking that if he went slowly, she might calm down.  
Her legs wrapped around his waist to complement his movements. The stubble on her legs rubbed up against the skin on his back. “Dean.” She said in between kisses. “You can speed up.”  
Dean’s laugh rumbled in his throat again. “You’d like that, Rosemary.” She moaned when he said her name.  
“You can call me ‘Rose’.” She smiled with her eyes closed. Her fingers traced in light circles up his arms. A thousand goose bumps erupted wherever she went. Her fingers were icy at the tips and warm at the middle. He could feel himself getting hard again. She opened his eyes and he got hard for certain.   
Rose’s eyes were big and dark from on the pillow. A little droplet of sweat trickled down to the bow of her neck. She traced the curve of his jawline with her finger and bit her lip. Her eyes seemed to beg for him to come down and kiss her again, so he complied. He reached over on their night table for a condom out of the dark box. He took a moment to put it on. She was awful impatient: her fingers played down near his wrist, tracing tiny circles.  
Dean leaned back over to where she was. Something wet was glistening on her cheek that he assumed was sweat. Rose was so beautiful. He crouched down to kiss her neck. One fist was planted into the bed, and the other was holding her shoulder. “Do you love me?” he murmured into her neck. He could feel her smile; normally he wouldn’t ask, she would offer it up freely.  
“You’ve never asked before.” Her fingers looped into his hair. “Don’t you know you have to work for it?”   
Dean growled into her ear, “Then say it.”  
Rose brushed through the tip of his hair with her fingertips. He responded in turn by putting a knee on either side of her hips and his fingertips interlaced with hers on the bed. Rose’s wrists were pushed deep into the bed, just as she liked it. “Now,” he growled again.  
Her eyes looked at him with so much weight and promise that he fell for her a little bit deeper right then and there, more so than he had in the past. With his weight pressing gently down on hers, he licked at her navel.  
“Dean.” She tried to move a hand, but he forced it back down into the bed. The effort that she had to put into each word was marked by the slowness of which they came out of her mouth. “I’ll be damned, I love you, Dean.” He finally thrust his cock inside her, so his name came out with a moan. “Dean--” Her voice cracked on the end, as they both went into orgasm.   
When it was over, he fell forward onto her, with his cock still twitching from in the orange condom. The sound of her breathing made everything a thousand times more worth it. She reached out a shaking hand to stroke the side of his face. Little droplets of sweat came off onto her finger. He looked down at Rose and she smiled at him and he smiled back.   
“I love you.” Her voice was small, but the words caught a hold inside of his chest, causing his heart to race. He leaned down to kiss her lips again. In between kisses, she whispered the electric words again and again. Each time that they came off of her lips, he would whisper them back. Like a game of telephone, the words grew more blurry as they fucked again. Dean had remembered that she had still tasted of whiskey and tears all the while.   
The last thing he remembered before falling asleep that night was Rose’s body pressed into his, with her face upturned to stare into his eyes. Before he fell asleep, a few single tears rolled down her cheeks, but her face had the same soft smile that she had borne while saying that she loved him. Rose was still saying it in his mind. As he drifted off to sleep, he could hear her voice saying it over and over again. Her dark eyes were the last thing that he saw of her before everything went black.


	6. VI

VI.  
That was the only thing that he had wanted to remember. What use was the other times that they had slept together or even the memories of the times where the four of them had all been together as a family? Rose clearly didn’t give a shit anymore about any of them. She had even tried to kill Cas, and out of all of them, they had the whole angel thing and Enochian that they could bond over together.   
She had left presumably in the middle of that night. Her mother’s ring had lain down on the dresser next to their bed, one of the most meaningful signs that she had left them with no intention of returning. All her clothes were left behind; Sam had made him put them into boxes when she had been gone a whole year. Otherwise, as Sam had rightly guessed, Dean would have left them where she had left them till kingdom come. True to her form, she selectively raided the armory, taking almost all of their angel blades. Pieces parts that she had ransacked through laid in defeated semi-piles on the floor. Later, he would walk through the piles of bullet casings and stakes, as if she had left them some silly message that they would know how to read.  
“Dean!”   
He had been so lost staring at the door that he jumped when Sam came running in.   
“Dude,” Sam’s face was more alert than he had seen in months. His eyes had something nauseating in them that reminded Dean of excitement. “Charlie’s here.”  
Dean’s brow furrowed. “And?” Why was he telling him anything?  
Sam sighed. “And Cas is the only thing stopping her right now from ripping Rose’s head off.”  
Dean stood and, without a word to Sam, kicked open the door to Rose’s bedroom. Her arm jerked up to grab at the nonexistent blade at her waist. Rose’s other hand shielded her eyes from the light. The fluorescents made the blood on her sweater stand out more so than usual. The sight tugged at something in his gut that he ignored. He had decided that if she didn’t give a damn, then neither would he.  
Sam flinched but didn’t say anything. Dean wished that he could erase the look of pain off of his brother’s face and put it back onto its generator more than anything in that moment, but he was powerless against her. He would stare at Sam’s face as she got out of bed. Her feet rustled against the floor: her feet were probably still frayed from what the demon had done to them, the demon that she, after all, had willingly allowed to come into her body. If he looked at her before she crossed the threshold, he would want to throw her up against a wall and demand that she tell him why exactly she had left him without a word and never returned.  
Rose walked out into the light. Her shadow fell upon him and it cast a dark shadow over his hands. She didn’t turn to look at him, or even to acknowledge Sam. Her face was set, albeit a little more swollen, and she waited impassively for Charlie to rip her a new one.   
“Where is she?” Charlie’s voice was so incensed that it squeaked at the very last possible syllable. He could hear her plowing through the kitchen, past Cas and through the doorway. Her flaming hair swished around her face and into her eyes. With one hand, Charlie pushed her bangs back over the part in her hair, and with the other, she charged at Rose.  
When Charlie got within an inch of Rose she stopped. Maybe it was the angle of the light that shone on Rose’s bloody face, or the fact that Charlie didn’t have the will to deck Rose. Charlie drew her arm back, and Dean was wrong for another time that day.  
Charlie’s fist connected with Rose’s face before he could stop her. With one hand after Charlie had broken contact, he stepped in front of Rose to face the brunt of Charlie’s wrath. Sam had seized her arm and pulled her back as gently as he could. Cas, who had ran in just after Charlie had, disappeared and then reappeared behind Rose. He still had Rose’s blood all over his clothes, and Rose was still wearing his jacket. Dean felt sick.  
Charlie’s face was alight with pain. “What is wrong with your face?” She held onto her still curled fist. Her thumb was on the inside of her fingers. Charlie bit her lip and swore. “Fuck, Rose,” She tried to unfurl her hand and her voice caught at the seam. “It’s like hitting a rock.”  
Rose sidestepped him; her fingers lightly brushed against his arm, and he felt nauseous again. The memories were still fresh in his mind. She didn’t say anything, but grabbed Charlie’s hand quickly. Charlie gasped and swore again, but Rose wrapped her fingers onto Charlie’s hand, which glowed for a moment with golden light before turning back to the original shade of pale.  
Rose looked down at Charlie hand, and let go as soon as the healing was over. “If you punch like that,” she rasped, “You’ll break your thumb.” She wove her fingers through Charlie hand and pulled out her thumb to curl around the rest of her fingers.   
Charlie looked up at Rose, her mouth agape. “But…I thought that you didn’t have any more angel stuff to give.”  
Rose didn’t make Charlie’s eye contact. “Superman gave me some juice.”   
Dean heard Cas intake an odd breath that he decided to ignore. So Cas was Superman again? Peachy.  
Charlie shook her head. “Rose,” Then, her voice shot through another octave. “What have you done to my sweater?”  
Rose looked up and then down at Creamsicle striped sweater that she had adorned with her blood all over it. Dean should have known that anything that colorful could not have willingly come from Rose’s wardrobe, and had Charlie’s name stamped all over it.  
Charlie didn’t wait for Rose to try to speak. Her eyes were still horrified at the state of her sweater. She grabbed Rose’s arm and twisted the sleeve to stare at the darkened sleeve. She lifted up Rose’s arm like a marionette string to look at the other dark stain on Rose’s stomach. Rose moved her other arm in synch with Charlie to keep the sweater down. Charlie didn’t notice.  
“Two years?” Charlie broke through her own silence. Dean felt himself breathe again. “Two fucking years, Rosemary? Am I worth eighteen months of silence? Are they?” She threw a thumb back at Sam’s direction, and then pointed her newly mended index finger at him and Cas.  
Sam’s face scrunched up. “Wait, you only ignored her for eighteen months?”   
Dean felt himself do the math too. “That’s four months less than us.” The disgust in his stomach deepened. At some point, he would reach the threshold where no more Rose-related news could faze him. This was not that point.  
Rose had looked straight ahead through Charlie.   
“Is that it?” Charlie had moved through the stage of bargaining to depression, which was currently populated by a hundred percent of Team Free Will. He could almost hear Rose narrating it in his head. “So you’re back.” Her voice was flat. “What could you have possibly done that was worse than we could handle?”  
Rose looked up. “I did what I had to.”  
“And what was that?”   
Every person in the room hung on the words that were to come from Rose’s lips. If he had been an outsider, he would have laughed at how ridiculous they must look. In the end, whatever she would have to say wouldn’t change a damn thing. Rose would still be gone, no matter how long she stayed.   
She scratched at her bloody hairline again. Small flakes of blackish blood came out under her fingernails. Sam looked disgusted, but didn’t say anything.   
Charlie crossed her arms. “I’ll wait if you’re going to be stupid about it.” She paused for a minute. “Okay, just because I said I was going to wait, doesn’t really mean that I want to wait for you to just stand there like you’re frozen in carbonite.”   
Rose didn’t roll her eyes, so Charlie tilted her head to the side. Something hit her that they had missed, and her face grew set. “When did it happen?”  
Rose swallowed. “Two years ago this October,” Her face screwed up and she forced one of her hands back through her hair. From behind him, Dean could hear Cas shift his weight. “They’re all dead.”   
Charlie frowned. “Who died specifically?”  
“My family, Charlie. The whole damn lot.” Her voice broke. “Holly and Dad and Sami.” She said it all in one breath. When the words finally came out, Rose folded her arms tightly across her chest. In the snatches of her fingers, she held Cas’ jacket and shook.   
Charlie said, “What have you been doing for the other twenty three months?”  
“Hunting.”  
Dean broke it, “Alone?”  
Rose shrugged. “Mostly.”  
“‘Mostly’.” Dean echoed back. “What have you been hunting?”  
Her head twitched and she twisted her fingers farther in on the jacket. “Just hunting.”  
Sam said, “You’re a piss-poor liar.” He was right in front of her, so she looked up at him, but she didn’t say anything. “Are you going to make us draw it out of you? ‘Cause we will.”  
Rose shook her head. “It’s something I’m handling.”  
Dean snorted, “So ‘handling’ is having a demon party in your skin?” He was getting in steam. “I mean, forget about uprooting all of our lives and acting like a selfish child, what you did yesterday was fifty shades of weird.”  
Rose turned around slowly, and removed her hands from their position protecting her torso from whatever she was afraid of happening. “I’m hunting the thing that killed them.” Her voice was flat, expressionless. “Up until yesterday that was going well.” Instead of curling up, her voice lowered, “Melinda was going to lead me to him.”   
“Melinda?” Dean asked, “You’re on a first name basis with the demon that killed you?”  
“I don’t want to fight with you, Dean.” There was an edge in her voice. “Let me go.”  
Sam broke in, “Jesus Christ, Rose, can’t you see that you’re too fucked up to go out now? Whatever killed them, you can’t fight it on your own.” He changed his tone to pleading, “Please, Rose.”  
She turned back to look at Sam and shake her head. “It’s over now. He’ll know now that I’m hunting him.” Her voice broke again, this time from anger, “You should have left me dead.” She roughly smeared a tear off of her face. “Now—now he will know where I am, which means that he knows where you’ll be, and he’ll kill us all.”   
Cas’ voice was strong, “Who?”  
She ignored him. “Maybe, if I leave now, I can lead him somewhere else.” She started to move past Sam and Charlie, but stopped mid-stride, before they could move in front of her. “Crowley can help me.”  
Dean felt like his jaw would fall through the floor. He couldn’t help repeating her for the third time that morning, “Crowley? Okay, now I know you’re wackadoodle nuts, kid. You—you hate Crowley worse than anything in the world. Didn’t you shoot him, in the face, repeatedly, the last time you met?”  
She shook her head and didn’t look at any of them. “I need to kill him, Dean. He killed her; he killed all of them.” She paused for a moment. “But I can’t. Matthias will know by now.”  
No bells rang, alarmed, in his head. “Who’s Matthias?” From there, his mind began to rack his brain for any details that would point him, or Rose, to someone or, what was more likely, something called ‘Matthias’.  
“No.” Cas stepped forward; there was no soft look on his face anymore. “You cannot hunt Matthias, Rosemary. Are you suicidal?”  
“Maybe so.” She looked up at him, her face alight with pain and anger. “And I did hunt him. I was so close, Castiel, so very, very close to finding him.” She looked weary of speaking. “And you had to bring me back.” Her voice dripped with disgust. “It’s all over now.” She looked up at Cas. Her whole face shone with appeals. “I will get out of your hair now.”   
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”  
“Sam, he does not have pride. So, he is unlike Lucifer, Crowley, Lilith, and Ruby. He has no ambition, so scratch out your history with Azazel and the Leviathans. He doesn’t want power, so fuck Metatron. He is not Biblical, he is not historical, he is not a bump-in-the-night-monster that you can frighten out of a house. He exists to burn things whenever he feels like it. He doesn’t even do it for fun or for money. He’s no whore. He--”  
“—we get it, he’s a big fish.” Dean snorted. “Get a room.”  
Rose didn’t say anything, but the look on her face was enough to shame him into silence.  
“Does the offer for that shower still stand?” She scratched some of the dried blood off from on her chin. “I’ll leave after that.”   
“But, darling, I thought you wanted to see me.”   
Dean groaned and shut his eyes. “How do you keep getting in?”  
“Your security has gotten lax.” Crowley stuck his hands deep into his pockets and flashed them all a grin. “What’s the matter, loves, can’t bear to see little old me?”  
Sam and Charlie edged away from him, but Rose brazenly stood still. Crowley saw her face and smiled. “Darling, you’re a little worse for wear, I’m afraid.” He picked at one of his fingernails with his teeth. “Oh, and Melinda sends her love.” He held up a piece of paper. “Well, she sends your death warrant, so have fun with that.” He crumpled it up into a ball and threw it at the ground. Rose watched it come to stop right before her bloody bare feet.  
“How long have you been listening?” The normalcy in Rose’s voice was unnerving.  
“Long enough to hear the whispers,” He sauntered forward.  
“Don’t touch her.” Dean took a half step forward, but Rose waved away his hand. She still hadn’t changed her position in proximity to Crowley.  
Crowley sighed as dramatically as he could. “Buddy, your little lady friend here is up to her ears in it.” He frowned at Rose. “Matthias? Do you have some sort of death wish? If it’s death you’re after, I can supply many a fitting chase.”   
“I want to kill him.”   
“That doesn’t quite answer my question.” Crowley took a step forward at Rose, then immediately backtracked, with his hands up. After a microsecond, his alarm melted and gave way to delight. “Naughty. So you have learned a few tricks. Well, before you go out again, make sure you add one against bad boys like me.”  
Rose looked down, her hand flew to the bloody patch on her stomach. “What?” Panic was in her eyes. “It’s broken, not gone.”  
Charlie looked from Dean to Sam. “What’s he talking about?” She squinted at Crowley. “Shouldn’t you be flying around as smoke or killing babies or something?”  
Crowley smirked. “Miss Bradbury, always a pleasure.”  
At this, Rose took a step forward. Crowley’s smirk got bigger.  
“No.”   
“Well,” he smiled at all the people behind Rose, “she’s back.”  
Rose shook her head. “Demon, go away.”  
Crowley rolled his eyes, “Angel-thing, make me.”  
Rose’s face stretched up into a smile. “Oh, I’m no angel.” She started to walk towards Crowley, and whatever was on her that Crowley feared caused him to walk back a few paces. “So get out.”  
Crowley squinted. “Don’t threaten me, love. It gets me excited.” He glanced down suggestively. At that, Rose stopped walking forward.  
Dean sighed, “Just get out.”  
Sam broke in too, “Really? She’s been back for less than a day and you’re already starting?”  
Crowley shrugged. “We’re in love, what can I say?”  
Dean couldn’t see Rose’s face, but she jerked backward a little, so at least a part of her was normal. She cleared her throat, and, for the first time in two years, he could hear Rose’s actual voice. “Buddy boy, you’d better get out of here before I exorcise your dumb ass out of here. Capice?”  
Crowley grinned at her. “Good to see you, Rose.” Before Rose could open her mouth to try and exorcize him, Crowley vanished. Rose turned around slowly, and her face was still weary when she glanced up at him.  
Maybe she would only end of staying for a few hours, or a week, or maybe more than that if he was lucky, but, for now, it was enough to see her tell Crowley off. There was a glimmer left of his Rosemary Kline, and she showed all of it in that split second.  
“Well,” she kept looking up and then away from all of them in turn. “Now I guess you’ll have to fight over who gets to kill me.”   
Sam smiled a little. “Sure thing,”  
Rose’s face was impassive, but she still parroted back at him their silly phrase: “Sure thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this during my study halls over the span of a few months. It is my first fanfic that I've written as an adult. Thank you, if you've read all of it. I'm an aspiring writer and I'd love to have someone read "Edison Lighthouse" and tell me what they think of it. Even if you completely hated it, I'd love to hear what you think.


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